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Nothing could be better than being at sea. It was my favorite
thing to do and the further out or the longer the trip the better. Occasionally
I liked to take someone with me. This could lighten the load and let me get up
and walk around with out having to always be fixed to the helm.
On this one trip I was going to go about two hundred miles to
a key near Honduras. I had decided it was a long enough trip to take
someone along. We were headed into small swells kicked up by a gentle wind
coming head on. Speed was not our concern as the old gal would only do 12
knots full out and we held back to about 2/3rds. We had about six
hours into the trip when I decided to get some shut eye as we would be traveling
through the night or at least for another 17 hours.
We were in deep ocean water without any obstacles between us
and our intended port of call. I decided to turn the helm over to the fellow who wanted to tag
along.
"Just hold this heading and I will be up in about five
hour to relieve you" I said gesturing across the compass in a
westerly direction and headed below.
I dozed off and woke without the use of an alarm right
about 5 hours later. It was just before dark and one of my favorite times at sea,
as the sun seems to pull down the shades over the horizon.
Something didn't feel right. It took me just a moment to realize the suns light
tumbling down the gangway from the stern of the boat when the bow should be
pointing into it.
Expecting to find him asleep at the wheel I bounded up and
out of the cabin. Hearing me coming he turned around and hollered "We're
just about there. I can see land."
Then it dawned on me, it must be morning and
it was the morning sun streaming in. I had slept the
entire night and he had piloted it all thru the night. I felt as though taking him on
this trip wasn't a bad idea after all. Sure enough I could see the lights, in
fact there seem to be too many lights. As far as I could remember there were
only a few building but this looked like a whole town. But that wasn't all,
the wind was now going with us and the sky was wrong. Behind us it was the
look of the dieing light of nightfall and not the bursting of the morning.
Looking over at the compass I had to do a double take, it looked to be exactly
the opposite of where it was supposed to be. It was.
"What the heck's going on. I thought I told you to hold
the heading of 270 and we're going East" I demanded.
"I'm doing what you told me. You pointed at that cloud
and I've aimed at it for the last five hours. Nearly caught up to it a couple of hours
ago."
Following that cloud had totally turned us around and we were
nearly back where we had started from 11 hours earlier.
Now of course with the advent of the auto pilot and GPS I won't have
to experience any more cloud navigating.
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