At dawn, I raised our anchor and we began drifting out of the mouth with the slight wind that was present. I quickly got the sails up and set to get us as far from land as fast as possible, but there was no wind!
We simply bobbed around as we drifted along with the waves out to sea.
The Monitor windvane did all the work for me. I knew that the winds were going to start out from the East and shift to be coming from the North, so I set the monitor and the sails for a broad reach. As the wind shifted, so did our path and we effortlessly and slowly made our way from land.
We sailed out beyond the entrances to the shipping channels that enter the Chesapeake Bay, so commercial traffic was not an issue as we were always outside of the channel.
While the sail was slow, the spectacles were far from it. We saw a massive school of jellyfish that were just below the surface, drifting along on the ocean currents. While this was interesting, it paled in comparison to the pod of dolphins that we encountered.
We were 7 miles out at sea at this point, and these dolphins were playing around in the waves like children playing in the surf on a beach. It reminded us that we are in their home, and they live here. We are merely visitors.
The winds were light, so we decided to make the most of them and sail through the night since the Monitor had been doing such a good job and we hadn't touched a thing all day. This was a sound plan, but the winds did not agree. As the sun set, the winds disappeared. Our plans to sail through the night quickly vanished and we were forced to heave to through the night.
