This, of course, is small consolation when we're damp and shivering and motoring from one place to the next. So now that we're heading back south, the skies have been blue much of the time, and the prevailing winds have, at season's end, finally begun to prevail. This theoretically means winds on the nose as we head more or less southwest. But we've actually been able to sail more now than we did on our way east, since our course zigzags along the coast, and in any event the wind has been anything but constant in both force and direction. Over the past week, we've been on just about every point of sail.
Mornings are usually flat calm.
The boat is covered with dew and the glassy water is covered with fine white mist, both dissipating as the sun strengthens. Sometimes the mist is enough to trigger the foghorns, their low calls echoing the occasional caws of birds on nearby islands. The bass note of the morning music is the drone of lobster boats, every day but Sunday, when lobstering is prohibited and silence reigns. We tend to leisurely mornings, since we never have very far to go and would just as soon wait for the wind. We listen to the weather on VHF and construct a route to our next destination.