It was pretty calm overnight as we rounded Montauk point and headed southeast toward Bermuda. Sunrise showed us an amazing flat calm which none of us ever expected from the Atlantic Ocean.
As I took my morning watch I saw a little bird huddled down on the deck behind some coiled lines, obviously quite happy to be sheltered from some of the wind and cold. Roy fed it some bread crumbs and sugar water which seemed to really help it perk up. As the morning warmed, the bird fluttered around the boat for a while, giving us looks as if to ask where we might be headed. By afternoon it had made a couple of test flights away from the boat and back, then finally took off for good and headed west toward land.
So far, the only problem we had was that we'd run out of propane! Somehow in the process of provisioning the boat we had neglected to double check the tanks, with the result that hot meals became a thing of the past and we had no chance of hot coffee! Pete and I initially threatened mutiny, but bucked up and proceeded to get by on Nescafe made with hot tap water and an endless series of cold meat sandwiches and bowls of cereal.
We continued to sail throughout the day in generally mild seas, though the wind began to pick up, the swells were on the rise, the waves became more choppy and the temperature dropped. My evening watch was pretty cold and I was happy to be able to sit all huddled up while the autopilot steered the boat.
Overnight, sea conditions became markedly more dynamic, making sleep virtually impossible between watches and general boat keeping much more complex and demanding.
The Atlantic ocean may not have been treating us badly, but it wasn't giving us a free pass either!
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