Report from Bluewater, a Nordhavn 47, bound for Venezuela from Beaufort, North Carolina: At Sea - 143 NM SW of Beaufort, NC Report as of 12:00 EST Nov. 4, 2005 - Next report in 24 hours PART ONE FOR ALL A good first day offshore! After receiving one last FedEx package, we departed Beaufort at noon yesterday on a brilliant, sunny day with light winds--perfect passagemaking weather. At the sea buoy off Cape Lookout, Bluewater picked up a course for the west wall of the Gulf Stream with the plan to cross directly across the Gulf Stream to minimize exposure and minimize the northerly set. When we got to the waypoint nominally on the other side of the stream, we still had over a knot of set to the north us and the water termperature was 80 degrees--we were still in the stream--so we pressed on another 15 miles until things eased, then took a slight turn to the right. At the present time, we're enroute to a point where we hope to rendezvous with the Nordhavn 62 Seabird owned by Steve and Carol Argosy' who departed St. Augustine at mid-morning yesterday, and with a little luck we'll do most of the trip in company with one another. We set the paravanes just after Cape Lookout and noted that they put a 1/4 knot drag on our speed. We've run them without the Naiad active fin stabilizers ever since and the are doing a fine job of keeping the boat from rolling in the light winds and seas we've experienced. We had a problem with our advanced radar plotting aid (ARPA) which I thought I'd fixed in Beaufort, but it's still not working properly. Like the automatic identification system (AIS) we have, it's a nice frill that helps determine which ships are a threat to us and which are not, but it's definitely not essential gear. The Nobeltec AIS is working adequately but doesn't really identify ships until they are about three miles away, a bit too close for my liking.The good news is that we have not seen a ship for close to 18 hours! Our other problem has been getting the Iridium/Ocens e-mail up and running (again!). Thanks to great help from Rachelle at Ocens not to mention several hours of my time and Deans', we're back up and running with it on a different computer, though we have no idea why it would not run as before on the original computer. We set it up and gave it a good test before leaving. As Dean says, what we need is a 14-year-old computer expert onboard! PART TWO FOR OMNI WEATHER Keep the great weather coming, Bob! It appears that we may have to shift the rendezvous point a bit farther south--probably to the vicinity of 27-10 N / 71-27 W with our rendezvous expected late Sunday. Whatever course we take, it will not be far off the waypoints we've given you for planning purposes. PART THREE FOR ALL Position 32-55.0 N / 74-35.8 W as of 12:00 EST Friday, Nov. 4, 2005 Course 175 deg M Speed 6.6 kts @ 1925 RPM 995 NM to go to Fajardo Distance made good last 24 hours 157 NM, average speed from Beaufort 6.7 kts. Fuel consumption 120 gals (est), est fuel remaining 1350 gals, avg 1.3 MPG and 5.0 GPH. Conditions: Wind 120 deg M @12 kts., swells 2-4 ft from 150 deg. M, partly cloudly, Visibility excellent. Past 24 hours seas nil from SE, and winds averaged 5-10 kts. from SE. Barometer 1024.7 mb, slowly falling. Sea water temp 80, air temp 78. ETA Fajardo: 12:00 Sunday Nov. 10. All is well. --Milt, Judy, Dean and Schipperke Katy Milt Baker Bluewater Nordhavn 47 #32