June 01 - 02, 2000 -- Wrightsville Beach Bound

June 1 - 2, 2000 -- Wrightsville Beach Bound On June 1 at 1500 GMT (11:00 AM EDT), we left the City Marina in Charleston. It was a beautiful day, with perfect winds for sailing. The seas were comfortable, though on the beam. There was enough wind to provide us good stabilization and a boost from a reduced main. We discussed putting out additional sail, but decided not to. Mike was concerned that we could be faced with an emergency and I could injure myself. I agreed, reluctantly to this. At 1605 GMT, we saw dolphins playing in the inlet. They were swimming back and forth in the inlet diving through the waves. At 1830 GMT, Mike did his flipper call. At 1844 GMT, we saw the sailing vessel San Souci. We hailed them on the radio and chatted for a bit. Ken and Dee are headed up from Key West to Norfolk. They are anticipating stopping in Beaufort. At 2128 GMT, we saw dolphins! A young adult male came charging towards us. We watched as he went shooting past us by several hundred yards. By the time he realized what happened, he decided there were more interesting 'fish' in the sea and swam on out of sight. At 2200 GMT, the water maker cut off. It looks like we need to change the pre filters when we get to Wrightsville Beach. This was not something that needed to be addressed right away as we had about 400 to 500 gallons on fresh water on board. This would last us for over a month if we needed it to last that long. On June 2 at 0800, I came on watch. Mike informed me that the winds had kicked up and he had reduced the main because if we continued at the speed were going, we would get to Wrightsville Beach before daylight. . At this point, we were experiencing some rolly seas. After Mike went below, I checked everything out and discovered that we had very little of the main out. I was ready to wake Mike up and have him come back out and put more sail out! No wonder we were rolling from side to side so much, we had next to no stability! I didn't wake him up though, I figured that if he set the sail, he could deal with the rolly sleeping, which he did disgustingly well. When he woke up, I asked him why he furled the sail so much. He told me that we were going way too fast and he wanted to slow us down. I asked him why he didn't just slow the engines down. He said, "Oops, well, I couldn't see how much I reduced it even using a flash light from the helm it was too dark, and we do not leave the cockpit area without both of us awake." I went to bed. At 1000 GMT, Dave and Dee on Sherrette hailed to say hi. They are on their way to Beaufort. At 1131 GMT, we anchored in Banks channel in Wrightsville Beach, NC. We traveled 170 miles marina to anchorage in 20 hours 30 minutes at an average speed of 8.29 knots