David’s Voyage Blog

Publish Date: Saturday, May 14, 2011
Location: Cape Hatteras, North Carolina
Coordinates: 35° 17.26′ N  75° 21.78′ W

We just rounded Cape Hatteras, which is the second big milestone for our voyage (the first being getting back to the Florida coast). The weather is looking good for us to continue at least up to New York, so we’re steaming ahead. The seas look a little dicey for Monday night and Tuesday, so we’ll evaluate things on Monday and decide whether to stop in Sandy Hook, New Jersey, or continue on to Rhode Island.

Last night we were in a band of thunderstorms off the coast of North Carolina, and it was pretty intense. The seas never got terrible, but the lightening and thunder were quite unnerving. We put a laptop (with charts) and a GPS in the microwave oven (a makeshift Faraday cage) in an effort to protect them from the possible catastrophic lightening strike. Fortunately we were spared, and we even managed not to forget the computer was in the convection microwave before pre-heating it for breakfast this morning!

Two days ago we were cruising off the coast of Georgia/South Carolina in pretty big seas, when a new contact appeared on our radar about two miles in front of us. Usually a contact appears sooner than that, but because of the big seas we decided it might have been masked until then. Kathryn immediately saw water breaking against the contact, and it was straight ahead of us. It looked strange: it wasn’t a boat, but it wasn’t a buoy either. It looked like two pipes sticking up out of the water. We checked our charts to see if maybe there was an oil/gas wellhead in the vicinity, but the chart showed nothing.

We altered course about fifteen degrees to starboard to give it a wide berth, and we kept an eye on it through the binoculars as it got closer. Something wasn’t right: Water was breaking against these pipes in the opposite direction than we would expect from the prevailing seas — it was moving through the water! Holy cow! It’s a submarine! Sure enough, when it got next to us, about a half mile off our port beam, it began to surface. We could see the tower and fins, and then once it was behind us we saw the whole submarine surface. Wow! That was cool. And terrifying. And cool!

So now we’ve pointed the bow towards Ocean City, Maryland, and then we’ll run the coast of New Jersey up to New York. Whether we stop in Sandy Hook, New Jersey or continue on to Rhode Island, it’s been a fantastic voyage!