David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Friday, April 24, 2009
Location:  Cape Hatteras, North Carolina

After 2-1/2 days at sea we rounded Cape Hatteras this evening, and all is well. The weather and sea conditions have been beautiful, and the boat has performed flawlessly so far. Our satellite phone connection stopped working after the first day, so we’ve been out of touch since then. Kathryn blogged the first day, but it didn’t get posted until today because of our satellite phone problems. Now that we’ve rounded Cape Hatteras we are getting a cell phone signal from land for both voice and Internet.

We’ve travelled 470 miles since leaving St. Augustine on Wed morning. Our average speed has been 7.5 knots, which we’re happy with. I don’t think we’ll be able to keep that up now that we’re leaving the Gulf Stream, but we’ll see how it goes. At this rate we would get into New York late Sunday evening, which isn’t an ideal time to enter New York Harbor, so we may either slow down or lay over somewhere on our way in.

Kathryn and I have been handling the night watches pretty well. I stand from 9pm-3am while Kathryn sleeps, and then she takes from 3am-9am while I sleep. We each take a nap sometime during the day (~1 hour), and so far we’re holding up pretty well. Ayla helps out with watches during the day, and she’s working up to a night watch herself. After a couple days of this, it starts to feel normal.

Kathryn has been amazing in the galley: We’ve had roast beef and carmelized onions, antipasta, blueberry muffins, biscuit and jam, key lime pie, and others — all prepared while underway. We eat very well when the seas are calm and the chef is rested!

Ayla has been doing school in the morning, improving her Mario Cart (Wii) skills in the afternoon, and watching various movies with me in the evening. She has also helped out Kathryn with the meals, practicing her stewarding skills. She love it out here, and if she had her way we would stay out here for weeks.

That’s all from the pilothouse of Three@Sea. We’re looking forward to another couple days of this weather before arriving in New York. We plan to be moored at the 79th Street Boat Basin in Manhattan — come on by and say ‘hello’!