Day 1: Let the Adventure Begins

4/17/2010, Saturday, 1700 Zulu, Lat. 09 26.2 N, Long. 079 53.7 W, Day 1

After getting up at 6 AM and spending the next 5 hours stowing things away (well, that was mostly Terry’s job as he knows where everything goes), we topped off the water tank and cast off all lines and started heading out the breakwater getting away from Colon. We were happy that we were finally underway, especially for Terry, as the boat has been at the marina for over 9 months.

Wind was light at 7 knots coming from the northwest and we managed to squeeze 4 knots of boat speed out of Living Water with a full main and a 135% Genoa heading northeast. Our first waypoint is Sueno, about 298 nm due north. It has two reefs about 24 nm apart and we set our mark right between the two reefs. From there we can either go to the Grand Cayman or take a direct shot to Galveston. Our entire trip is 1590 nm by the rhumb line. We’ll make that decision when we get there and it will all depend on where the wind is coming from.

At 4 PM we tacked from port to starboard and were able to make our way north at a better speed of 5.5 knots. Terry and I were pretty happy with our progress as the weather report was predicting fairly light winds. Terry had his fishing line in the water and he was getting a couple of bites right before sundown but couldn’t hook the fish. Well, dinner was left over Osso Bucco and mushroom risotto.

The wind picked up during the night and we were doing about 6 knots and slowly shaving off the long distance we have to face the next couple of weeks. But, then it became light and we had to kick-up the motor around 3 AM. We needed to charge our battery anyway. Terry spent most of his on and off watch time blogging and fine tuning all his electronics. He is such a perfectionist. I have to yell at him so he can get some rest.

Throughout the night we had to keep watch for other boats. We used radar to look around us from 6 to 24 nm range. We must have encountered about 20 ships in the early hours but traffic lightened up approaching dawn. Had a great sunrise and saw Jupiter hanging above the eastern horizon until the sun rise got too bright to see it.