October 27, 2000 -- Little Choptank to St. Mary's

We got underway this morning at 1200 GMT (8:00 AM EDT). It was overcast, but fortunately there was no fog this morning. The news was reporting heavy fog to the north of us, and we were pleasantly surprised to have such clear weather. The winds were blowing mainly out of the North, so we had following seas and, of course, the wind was behind us. The autopilot did pretty well, considering the wave period on the bay was quite short, perhaps four seconds. We decided to take advantage of the 10 knots of wind on our stern with our sails. We pulled out our preventer and attached it to the boom. A preventer helps keep the boat from an uncontrolled jibe. We swung the boom out and ran down wind. We tried putting our stay sail out as well, but were unable to accomplish much with it so we put it away. We would have tried using our jib, but the furling housing is still with Hood getting repaired. We ran that way for most of the trip to the Potomac. We disengaged the preventer, and prepared to turn into the mouth of the Potomac. We had almost 20 knots right on the beam. The boat heeled over nicely, and we gained almost a knot in speed as we rounded Point Lookout. We continued a leisurely trek into the St. Mary's where we dropped the hook at 1845 GMT. We noted on the news that temperatures over the next few days were going to get down into the 30s at night, and the wind would be changing direction from North East to North West