We have arrived in Ocean City, Maryland

When we left Stonington Harbor on Friday morning, our destination was Block Island.  As we cleared the breakwater, however, we decided to skip Block and make directly for Cape May, New Jersey.  Going to Block would have probably trapped us there for a couple days, since we had a pretty small weather window.  We had plenty of fuel and favorable sea conditions, so we made the decision to go for it.  The sun was bright and the seas were eerily calm, and we made great time to the tip of Montauk at the end of Long Island, NY.  In fact, it was so good, we changed our minds and chose to make directly for Norfolk!  As the miles and hours passed, we began to settle into a rhythm.  Here are a few pictures from that first day:

Jeannette and Ed, letting Otto do the work

I put this here against my will.  Good grief, not my favorite picture

Reece goofing around

Jeannette chillin'

Ben enjoying the ride

Crew of Second Wind

Absolutely gorgeous day

Full sail

The highlight of the whole trip happened pretty late in the afternoon, but I'll have to show the video in a separate post (the upload to YouTube is taking a while).

Late the next day, we began to get concerned about the timing, both of our destination arrival and the weather.  At our current speed, we would be getting into the entrance of the Chesapeake early in the morning (good), but possibly low on fuel (bad).  If we chose to go into Cape May, we'd being entering in the middle of the night - not a good choice at all (an unfamiliar port at night can be risky).  Looking at the charts, we decided to head for Ocean City, Maryland, which is a good bit south of Cape May and good progress toward Norfolk.  Looking at our cruising guides, there are several good marinas and Ocean City is easy to get into.  Here is our course:

As it turns out, it was an excellent choice.  We are docked at Sunset Marina, where we've refueled, pumped out the head, refilled the water tanks, and washed off the boat.  Now we are resting, recuperating, and planning our next leg of the journey.

Some random thoughts and events from the trip:

• Night sailing is just awesome!  The sound of the wind and the water and the boom of the sails - it is fantastic.
• Navigating at night is nerve-wracking - lights disappear, bounce around, seem to come closer, then fade away.  Ed was looking at a ship and misread the lights and gave himself a good scare.  He figured it out pretty quick, but he was shaken for a few minutes. 
• Steering in the open ocean is very different than our usual sailing - there are no landmarks and you rely completely on your equipment, mainly the steering compass.  It takes a while to get used to this.
• There were many, many hours where there was literally *nothing* on the horizon - we were completely alone in the ocean.  A very unnerving feeling.
• We mostly avoided seasickness, though Reece surprised us with a couple sudden "I have a headache in my mouth"..../hurl moments.  Yuck.  The rest of us took some mild remedies, mostly precautionary.
• Sleeping when underway is quite different than at anchor - since the boat is heeling, the normal berths don't quite work right.  In our aft cabin, Rebecca and Reece ended up squished together on top of me, which was a problem because I had to keep getting up to help adjust sails or take the wheel for my watch.  Ben and Jeannette were supposed to be in the forward cabin, but they were frequently getting bounced to the ceiling when pounding through waves.  It all worked out, but we were quite tired when we reached port.
• Motor-sailing is great - we traveled 327 miles in 40.8 hours while consuming only 22.7 gallons of diesel!  Our overall average burn rate was 0.41 gallons per hour - very, very good.  Excluding the sail time, we averaged 0.66 gallons per hour at 2600 rpm and 0.56 gallons per hour at 1900 rpm.  Given the right conditions, we really could cross oceans!
• Eating during a multi-day passage is usually limited to snack food and sandwiches, but a hot pizza after two days a sea was a great treat!  We all agreed it was just what we needed after

Okay, I'd better wrap this post up here and let the others contribute their thoughts!