Friday, June 20 – Sunday June 22 — On Thursday, we’d mentioned that our speeds inside the Gulf Stream were incredible. Eric had had calculated that if we could maintain a speed of 10.2 knots, we’d get in a full day ahead of schedule, so he’d increased RPMs to 1750 to get us up to 10.2 knots. Then our speed picked up even more, eventually getting to 11.7 knots!
After that peak, our speed slowly crept back down, and by 0800 on Friday, we were doing 10.4 knots. While the extra speed was exciting, we were on track to arrive in the middle of the night, so Eric dropped the RPMs back down to 1650 for a daylight arrival. At 1650 RPM, we were still doing a blazing fast 8.8 knots! The speeds continued to slowly creep down the rest of the day, and by 0800 on Saturday. we were down to 7.1 — which was still a great speed.
On Saturday, the speed slowly crept back up. Eric kept reducing RPMs to keep us on track for a daylight arrival. By midnight on Saturday night/Sunday morning, we were doing 9.3 knots at 1500 RPM! On Sunday, our speed was a yo-yo, but we were still averaging a fast enough speed that Eric continued to gradually reduce RPMs to 1425 — and we were still averaging 5.5-knots at 1425!
On Sunday evening at about 2000, Eric changed our course to avoid the shipping lanes in the Chesapeake Bay. The new route added more miles, which was fine as we needed to arrive later, anyways. Once he’d re-routed us, he increased the RPMs to 1650.
On Friday, for most of the day, the sea conditions were the same as they had been on Thursday: 2 -3 foot swells at 5 -6 seconds with 1-2 foot wind chop. But on Friday evening, we were hit with a squall at about 1830. It was ominous on the radar.
The wind went from nearly dead to strong in an instant, and the seas rapidly worsened. We’re pretty sure it rained a little bit. But it passed relatively quickly, and all went back to being calm almost as fast as it had picked up. We could see the silent lightning from the storm for a long time after it had passed.
