Charleston SC - Ft Lauderdale FL 2010: Day 1

The first day of our passage from Charleston, SC to Ft Lauderdale, FL went very smoothly.  Quite literally smooth sailing (well, motor-sailing anyway).   The light North winds that were predicted were overwhelmed by land and sea breezes generated by the heating and cooling of the east coast landmass so we generally had light wind on the beam mixed with 2-3 foot rollers from the north.  

Today we are a little further out to sea and aren’t affected by the land and sea breezes so we’re getting the 5-10 knot North winds now.  That’s not much to sail with so we’re motor sailing once again.  Tomorrow the winds are supposed to pick up and by tomorrow night we’ll probably be in 20 knot North winds with 7-9 foot following seas building to 8-10 footers as we reach Ft Lauderdale. 

All three of us are doing well and are looking forward to packing away the cold weather clothing.

We were visited several times by dolphin pods.  On the first visit, the pod was especially playful.  Several would jump clear out of the water beside our boat while others were swimming and playing off the bows.  Then we saw something new to us.  One of the dolphins would swim upside down beneath another dolphin and they would “tickle” each other’s belly with their fins.  We’re not sure if they were playing or flirting, but it was fun to watch!

This morning Jen was greeted by a very large pod of dolphins.  She estimates there were at least 30 swimming all around Mirasol.   She grabbed the camera and took a nice video of some of them playing off the port bow.  We’ll post that on the web site when we get in.  Jen also saw a large sea turtle this morning.

One other remarkable bit of sea life we saw were thousands of globular brown and tan jellyfish.  They were floating near the surface just outside of Charleston.   For the first several hours of the voyage, you could look anywhere around the boat and see dozens at any one instant.  I think it is a seasonal thing as I recall seeing something like this the last time we sailed south from Charleston in November.

That’s all for now.