We reached our anchorage yesterday afternoon at about 3:30 p.m. We are planning on a ‘rest’ day again and will stay here a second night before heading north again. We had a horde of flies all day yesterday. They liked to come into the pilot house because it was calm in there. It was calm until Karl insisted I bring the battery powered vacuum up and he sucked them all in. That took care of them for a few minutes and we decided to close the doors and roll down the window flaps, not zipping them so we would have a supply of cooler air. That slowed them down to a better rate of entry. They are still pretty active today, but we have the screen door latched so they can’t get in the cabin and bite us.
The sunset last night was a gorgeous display. The tidal current and the wind were arguing about which direction the boat should be facing, the tide won until after bed time. Then in the night, the wind came up stronger and we weren’t pointing into it. We rolled quite a bit, and I wasn’t sure I’d get back to sleep, but finally did after the boat got itself situated into the wind.
While we were underway yesterday, Karl commented that he always said that he didn’t want to become one of those old men who sat and stared out at the world going by, but here he was… he was at the helm on autopilot and watching the world go by. It’s a good thing he’s not old!
Karl suggested I talk about some of our safety equipment we use every day: the communication headsets and our life vests. Both of these things make everyday life safer and help to keep misunderstandings to a minimum.
The headsets keep communication open when we aren’t close by. Here, I am rinsing off the anchor chain while it is being brought up.
I can call off how many feet have come up, or let Karl know to back up because we are moving over the anchor. Our voices come in loud and clear, and we don’t have to shout at each other or repeat ourselves (very often.) When we are in rough water, we use them when I go below for something, letting Karl know I was down safely or on my way back up.
We chose inflatable life vests for comfort. We don them before raising anchor and wait to remove them after we drop anchor at night.
These vests have 3 ways of inflating. The first one is if they get wet. Fall in the drink, and they should automatically inflate from a cartridge. If that fails, there is a pull cord that should trigger the cartridge. If that fails, there is also a tube on the inside to manually inflate the vest. Speaking of these, I think we should get some extra cartridges. Hopefully we will never have to use them.
We also have the bulky, orange life vests available. I’ll have to consider those when we have to go out into the Atlantic. I’d rather be a bit uncomfortable and safe than comfortable and sorry! It will probably depend on how rough it is.
