The Passage

The outside sky is black. Emily is asleep below and will not awaken for another 3 hours or so. I am inside the pilothouse studying the instruments that have all been dimmed to the maximum extent or have been put into “night mode”. Kim is on the foredeck and the chain is being raised and clatters below down a long tube into the rode locker below. Even she is using limited light to rinse off the anchor and chain and keep her night vision that we may need as we sneak out of Cape Lookout Point in North Carolina just before 4:00 AM. We needed this early start to make it safely to our destination before sunset.

Since we touched the sandy bottom on the way into this anchorage, I am carefully looking at the two chart plotters to make sure we head directly towards deeper water. The anchor lifts free of its grip of the bottom that has held us safely overnight…and we are free. The transmission shifts into forward and we creep into the black night. The navigational markers that we are searching for blend easily into the lights on shore, but using RADAR and the chart plotters remove much of the confusion.

As we round the last navigational aid, we realize that most hazards are behind us and only 10 hours of open ocean separate us from our next anchorage. The first few minutes are the hardest. As the boat plows into the black emptiness, my mind starts to think of all the unseen objects we might hit. Will it be an empty metal container that has fallen off a ship at sea and is drifting just below the surface where it can escape my radar yet rip into my hull? Will it be a sleeping whale that just decided to use my route as the perfect place to have his slumber?

But as the minutes turn to hours, our mighty little ship keeps moving steadily where I have directed her. All the systems are working well and our confidence gains another notch.

I see the first signs of dawn at sea emerge. The first thing I see are the waves tops as the sun bounces off the clouds and reflects down to the sea long before it has actually decided to appear. The sea is calm this particular morning. There are long steady swells coming from Africa and it appears that our ship is moving across the chest of a great being as it slowly and gently breathes in and out. Then I begin to see the birds that have been awakened by our approach and take flight under our bow. Finally, the sky brightens and a great ball of fire erupts from the sea. No land is in sight.

Emily wakes up and joins Mommy and Daddy in the pilothouse just in time to see a pod of dolphins discover our boat and use our bow wake as an excuse to play. I have heard that they enjoy the pressure wave created at the bow but I would like to believe that they are safely escorting us South. I have no words to describe how cool that is.

Enjoy the video.

Tom