Auxiliary Fo’c’s’le

 

 

 

 

Fierce headwinds on the nose all day and night, with more and stronger expected the next day. Fun sailing, at nearly top speed, for hours on end. You cover a lot of ground quickly. Unfortunately, none of it gets you much closer to your destination. Progress is verrrry slow.

After beating hard for 24 hours, Paul did a quick calculation and determined that at the current rate we would never make it to the finish (or the festivities) by the deadline. Apparently, many others in the race had already come to the same conclusion.
Priorities being in their proper places, it took perhaps three heartbeats to decide we needed to set a new course.

We veered hard to starboard and into the Pawtuxent River. From there we rented some auxiliary power and motored down the inside passage, otherwise known as interstate 95, to Portsmouth.

The backup accommodations for Quintessence are not nearly as salty as the primary ones (the portholes aren’t even round, for example) and we are all suffering mightily. Nevertheless, we are quite grateful to have them – three cheers for our captain! – and look forward to returning to the ship and to surroundings for which we are more properly dressed: to dirty clothes, little sleep in moving beds, irregular meals, and damp quarters. In short, to all the things we are accustomed to.

We’ll push off again tomorrow on the inside passage north to rendezvous with the ship and, we hope, favorable winds.

 

 

postcard from the road

 

 

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