Euphemisms

Here's a euphemism: bumpy.

Here's another: spirited.

Here's a third: vigorous.

The real meanings behind those euphemisms describe, barely, the 53 mile sail from Manasquan to Atlantic City. We set off before 7am in rain, expecting winds in the 10-15 knot range and seas around 2-3 feet. What we got was much more: 15-20 knots of wind, gusts to 30. And the seas were averaging around 5 feet with frequent waves bigger than that.

So now that we are in a snug harbor, 5' waves don't sound so big. But out on the ocean with no safe spot for 53 miles, with the wind building at our back, with rain lashing our faces, the sailing was pretty spirited. The ride was fairly bumpy, and the whole day was pretty vigorous.

The boat handled the weather without any trouble. In fact, it was by a wide margin our fastest passage ever. We averaged well over 7 knots, went surfing down the faces of the waves at 11 knots, and regularly saw numbers deep into the 9 knot range. All of this is super speedy for a boat that has a typical top speed of 6.5 to 7.5 knots on a good day.

We made a few mistakes. The first was putting ourselves in a position where we felt we needed to leave a protected spot. Our marina was noisy, bumpy, and expensive. We prefer to anchor anyway. Also, all the touring we had been doing got us off our schedule, off our weather watching. So when we woke up to an ugly day, we let ourselves convince ourselves that the weather was going to be fine and that we needed to move.

Another mistake we made was setting out on a bumpy day when we had an all or nothing destination. The New Jersey coast is unkind to sailboats. There are very few inlets where we can pass the bridges and the shallow depths. That reality means we had nowhere to bail out to if things got too rough to make it to Atlantic City.