It's so Eerie

Well, we did it, headed for St Maarten again that is. My first overnight passage and it was a little disorienting at first to be travelling along in the pitch dark with absolutely nothing in sight. We left leverick Bay at 6pm and the plan was to arrive in St Maarten just after the sun came up.

With an empty cockpit, just Rayme charting our course and Auto steering for us, we sat back, listened to the mp3, read and popped up once in a while to keep an eye out for traffic.

Although we spelled eachother at 3 hr intervals, so we could each grab shut eye, I found sleeping impossible. The boat would surge up the oncoming wave, then it would crash down the other side, creaking, groaning, pitching and slamming, with huge thundering  thuds and sounds of waves washing over the bow. Like a roller coaster ride that lifts you up out of your seat, I would lift up out of bed like I was being levitated, only to drop back down to wait for the next one.  Not, real sleep inducing!

As the sun came up on the horizon we were just coming into St Maarten on the horizon.
With dawn breaking it was wonderful to finally stretch and move around. Then suddenly off our starboard side 3 dolphins were jumping along side the boat as if in morning greeting. What a great way to signal the end of our journey.
My first overnighter was over and successful. We got there with no problems and no one was seasick.  That's huge sucess in the boating world.