Two Birds, Two Sharks, One Sea Turtle, and Many Dolphins....

We left Charleston early on Wednesday with light winds out of the west. We knew we'd only have a couple of days of favorable winds before they turned more southerly.  We didn't have a specific destination, but we're trying to get to an area in Florida where we have a straight shot over to the west coast, near Tampa, so we can arrange to pick up some things we left with Bill's parents over there. So, we left with no real destination in mind, only to head in when the winds turn against us. 

The boat sailed well; we are still learning about her and trying different things with the sails. We don't have a roller furler so if we want to reduce sail we can either reef our genoa (the largest sail) or put on our smaller jib.  We did end up using the jib with a reefed main over night because we wanted to slow the boat down (~5 kts) while there was only one person on watch. 

Our Second Bird

It was a mostly uneventful trip, but we did have some visitors worth mentioning.  Twice during the first day we had a bird fly into our salon! The first one was in and out fairly quick, but the second one took a few minutes to coax out; it tried to get out the windows (that were closed) and flew down into one of the aft cabins, but finally flew up and out an open hatch, thankfully unhurt. We also saw two sharks!  The first one was a hammerhead (you could see his head through the waves) which was swimming near our fishing line, so we brought in the lines we had out. The second one we could only see his fin, which was dark grey or black, but you could tell it was a shark by the dorsal fin and tail. We also saw dolphins throughout the day, but there wasn't enough of a bow wave for them to swim in, so they were off to the side a little, but they are always fun to see. And lastly, and most fun of all, a large sea turtle!  He was swimming near the surface about a twenty five yards from the boat. It was a few miles outside of St. Augustine inlet. We hoped he would come by our boat, but he headed out to sea.