That didn't happen, again the fog set in and we ended up spending the next night, and day on Block Island. While on the anchor the guys practiced raising sails and we played with rope teaching each other knots. 

 The following morning as we are leaving Block Island, I am on the helm, and someone tells me to watch for a mooring ball which I had already seen, Don knows that I saw the ball and repremands the crew only to point out balls that I may not see, not the one right in front of me, it does make sense. 

 As we are sailing down the coast on the outside of Long Island we pass Montauk light, in the distance, as we leave the sight of land. The wind lightens so we are now running the engine with just the main sail, the jib put away, folded up on deck in its bag, there was no furling system on the Zyder Zee.  Darkness fell again, and as far as I know, at this point the trip was uneventful, a little disappointing to me, since we are running the engine more than I thought that we would. I do know that we had fog at times, what I did not know was that the crew was getting a little itchy. I don't remember seeing The Awesome, or Minefrow. I know the Awesome was close, at one point we thought that we saw it but again it was foggy.

 There was some question at some point about a strobe flashing but my mine set was only on sailing I didn't see what everyone else saw. A few days after leaving Block Island, we pulled the Zyder Zee up to an old cockroach infested dock, as we entered the Chesapeake bay where we fueled up.

 The crew jumped ship. Apparently these were the issues. During the fog on the Cape Cod Canal, someone was playing with the loran to find out how far we were from the isle of shoals. When we were on Block Island, as they were practicing raising the storm sail we were sailing around the mooring, and rubbing against the chain. Don had just painted the bottom and was probably concerned that the boat was going to be in the Bahamas all winter with paint scraped off the bottom. During the fog off of the coast between Montauk, and the Chesapeake, there was argument about the flashing strobe. I can't get into detail because as I said I was just there for the sailing, I stayed to myself, and was oblivious to any of the squabble going on. 

 The crew is now me, as we raced across Chesapeake Bay. I raised the main sail  and in the process the winch handle slipped out of the winch and belted me in the eye leaving it black and blue for a few days. Other than that we made our way to the intracoastal water way through the locks, and past CoinJock. We anchored off of a small Island in the woods for the evening, amazing again to me that we were now in the middle of the woods far from the ocean. This was also a good break from sailing off shore, the long days, and extremely long nights. When there was a favorable wind we raised sails and raced other boats. Our next stop was Belhaven, a popular place in the eighties for cruisers because it had a beautiful restaurant in the mansion of an old plantation, where you could get an all you can eat turkey dinner.

 Thats what we did.

 Now if you travel the intracoastal waterway you pass under 65ft bridge spans so there is no need to stop, most of the way anyway. Then you had to wait for the turn bridges. Sometimes they were on the hour and would not open during high traffic times so you could end up waiting hours for bridge openings. 

 The next night after leaving Belhaven we came to the Hoboken Bridge, and after passing through tied up along another decrepit fishing peer, in hopes of getting a shrimp dinner, that Don had raved about from years past. Nothing, the place had been closed for what looked like quite a while. I climbed up the side of the bridge embankment and talked to the attendant looking for food he said that we were in the middle of nowhere but if I had a gun I might be able to shoot a rabbet. I did not have a gun plus I had no idea how to clean a rabbet. 

 It took us three days to travel the intracoastal waterway to Moorhead City, South Carolina, again we tied to another decrepit dock at the Sanitary Restaurant, in Moorhead City. We got a meal there before leaving the next morning for Beaufort Inlet and on our way to Green Turtle, Bahamas, which would be our final destination.

 The crew is still Don Pegelow and I. For five days we sailed, never turned on the motor except to charge the batteries. We would see the Awesome out in the distance, and once in a while it would come close enough take pictures. The waves were huge, they seemed to be twenty feet, once in a while a squall would come up and we would have to lower sail, or reef, also we had dolphins that would come up, and swim in our bow wake, I would hang my feet over the side and play with them. I had the Zyder Zee to myself since when I was awake Don was a sleep. We took five days to get to Green Turtle, Key, Bahamas, registered with customs, had drinks and some local cuisine which was fried conk .

 That is the shell that looks like a giant snail, that you can blow as a horn or listen to the ocean in. We stayed just a day or so, we were running late for our plane schedules so we headed out. 

 That was my first cruise from Newburyport to the Bahamas, I am now hooked.