A mad dash of day job work, overnight to give us some leeway, and then the sun came up. We raised the sail in 4 knots of breeze and started the engine. Anchor up one last time by hand.

An easy run outside of the tiny harbor in Hampton, VA, and pointing out to the Chesapeake Bay Bridge. About halfway from the anchor to the bridge, there is more engine overheating. We turned off the engine and sailed, letting it cool, then checked it again.

We decided to fill it back up with coolant and then let it sit for a while to see if we could find any leaks.

While the engine was off, the autopilot belt snapped. I’m not joking, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Luckily, we keep a fully set up and ready to go spare autopilot wheel assembly on the boat. While the conditions were light, we hand-steered our way through the bridge opening to the ocean and then reefed down to a double reef and brought in a bunch of the headsail. Then we broke out the emergency tiller, which is horrible to use, and while Ryan manned that horrible tiller I pulled off the wheel, swapped out the autopilot units, then put the wheel back on. Then it was testing time. We let the autopilot work and after we were convinced she was all better, we checked the coolant levels. Seeing no leaks and a full coolant reserve tank we sparked up the engine and set our course north.

At this point, things got much easier. It had only been a few hours, and it seemed that we’d worked through all of the issues.

I replaced the broken belt on the autopilot to ensure we’d have a quick-access emergency spare, then put it all away.

Turned on the Starlink and got some day job work done.

And then continued going north. Things were so calm and going so well, we kept moving northeast and didn’t even pull near New York Harbor. The original plan was a pit stop at Atlantic Highlands. But instead, we pointed directly to Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts. The morning of the fourth day at sea, we pulled into Buzzards Bay at dawn and arrived at the entrance to the Cape Cod Canal at 8:30 am, which was perfectly at slack tide with the tide turning in our favor.

We were attached to our mooring before 1:00 pm in Provincetown and were finally able to rest. After a run to the café for a cup of tea though.