AMBITION - Merril et Cindy à BEAUFORT (NC)

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This afternoon, Ambition tied up to the dock in Morehead City / Beaufort North Carolina. Cindy and I were joined by our friend Gary who graciously offered to help us with this journey. Having an extra person on board makes all the difference with the overnight shifts and better said allows more sleep between the two hour shifts.

We both enjoy his company as well which is a good thing on a sailboat! Thanks Josephine for lending us Gary - he is back safe and sound as promised!

This completes leg one of the return - almost 700 miles from Marsh Harbour. Our last anchorage was Thursday night in Great Sale Cay Abacos and we sailed non stop to Beaufort. We arrived in the Gulf Stream Friday as was clearly evident when our boat speed jumped almost 2 knots immediately. Friday we sailed under spinnaker ( the big green sail with the fish!) until sunset - the longest I have ever had that sail up -- FANTASTIC!!!

Along the way we saw dolphins that stayed and played in our bow wave for 40 minutes, a submarine, an aircraft carrier, millions of flying fish (now minus the three that we found on deck very stiff in the morning!) and very few boats to my surprise - we went sometimes 15 or 20 hours without seeing another boat or ship.

The first two days the winds were light but Sunday and Monday made up for it with winds that maxed to 30 knots and seas to 15 feet in the pitch blackness of the night of course- at times the instruments showed a speed over the ground of 11.5 knots - something that I have never seen with Ambition. Otto our autopilot did a miraculous job steering us the entire distance - I could never have steered such a good course in those conditions.

Tomorrow we leave Beaufort for New Bern where we will drop Gary at the airport ... something about having to get back to work ..... interesting concept having been on vacation for sooooo many weeks now.

We will continue to hustle back to Lake Champlain and Montreal as fast as possible.

See you all soon,
Cindy and Merrill

PS. sad news today was that Pepper, our delightful grey puppy, was put to sleep to avoid further suffering, while we were in transit - we will miss her. Bye Pepper