Into the Open Ocean

Hello!  We are now 20 nautical miles out from Sandy Hook, NJ and the ocean leg of our adventure has officially begun.  We are moving along at 6 knots in a southerly wind we measure at about 10 knots.  The weather is warm but nothing like it was in the city and we are already settling in!  The wave action is pretty gentle and nobody seems to be getting sick...yet.  Tom is in the cockpit, reading a book, like we had all fantasized about doing but didn't have time for until this afternoon.  the reading has come after he took a nap to store up a little sleep for his night watch.  Rob is napping now.  We have already seen a pod of dolphins, numbering easily in the 30's, that swam by our boat just a few hundred feet away.  We can still see a few ships and the coast is visible but fading away.  We even have our windvane steering keeping us on course.  That was one thing that has been much easier than I expected.  The only thing we have using battery power is the GPS navigation system.  Sweet!

All three of us were working the phones hard to get in all of our last calls of goodbye to the people we love.  It got us all choked up and prompted a brief sharing of feelings, guy style.  Quick, matter of fact, and effective.  More later.

(Note: Much of the blog posting now will done by family from authorized emails sent while underway. Pics will be few and perhaps far between as they are not easy to upload in the open ocean.)