We'd like to leave July 2, Thursday night, and do an overnighter down the bay to Hospital Point. It's 36 miles. Rate×time=distance, right? How hard to can it be?

The basis for all of the planning is to work out the departure time. We don't want to arrive before sunrise, July 3. Nautical Sunrise (the earliest possible arrival) is 05:13. Actual sunrise is 05:53. Call it 06:00. This is important because we could simply leave the dock and sail all night. If we did this, we might arrive too early. We don't want to navigate the Elizabeth river in the dark.

So, 36 miles. Arrive at 06:00. Simple, right?

There are more complexities.

We don't want to depart Jackson Creek in the dark, full moon or no. And we'd like to leave on a rising tide, closer to high tide if possible. With a full moon, (or new moon) high tide is midnight, low tide is 18:00-ish.

It looks like this may be our schedule based on leaving work at 17:00. We arrive Deltaville at 19:00. The tide is rising and we have daylight until 20:35. We prepare and depart the dock sometime before 20:00 and chug down the creek in daylight. It's less than ideal, since we're only a few hours after low tide. Too early and the creek is too shallow. Too late and we'd run out of daylight to make the move.

We can then drop the anchor in the Piankatank, eat dinner, and figure out what to do next.

The weather is predicted to include wind from the S at 5-10 kt. This spells out two ways to make the trip.

• We could try beating our way down the bay. Tacking stretches the journey from 36 to at least 62 nm, perhaps more. At 4 knots, that's 15 hours of sailing: If we started at 20:00, we'd arrive around 11:00. That's potentially workable.

• We could motor straight there at 6 knots: 6 hours of motoring. Leave at midnight, arrive at dawn.

The uncomfortable part of sailing at night is tacking. Every two to three hours both of us have to be on deck to tack. It's possible to do this single-handed by setting Mr. Benmar on a new course and then hustling around the cockpit furling and unfurling the big yankee headsail. In the dark.

We could try on the easier-to-tend stays'l. But it's tiny. And with 5-10 knots of breeze, doesn't develop much speed.

The leaves us with anchor until midnight, and then zoom down the bay at six knots, and arrive at right around dawn. Two three-hour watches and we're there.

WX

On Wednesday, the NWS forecast includes a preliminary sense of weather on the Sunday return. We've got two weather zones to look at:

ANZ631 "Rappahannock Light"

Thu Night SE winds 5 kt. Waves 1 foot. A chance of showers and tstms in the evening...then showers likely after midnight.

Sun W winds 5 to 10 kt...becoming S in the afternoon. Waves 1 foot. A chance of showers and tstms. winds and waves higher and visibilities lower in and near tstms.

ANZ632 "Thimble Shoals"

Thu Night S winds 5 to 10 kt. Waves 1 foot. Showers and tstms likely in the evening...then showers likely after midnight.

Sun W winds 5 to 10 kt...becoming S in the afternoon. Waves 1 foot. A chance of showers and tstms. winds and waves higher and visibilities lower in and near tstms.

Okay. Rainy and Flat. Sounds like we're motoring to Norfolk.

The return, however, might involve sailing in the AM on the predicted W wind. When it backs into the S, that helps push us N to Deltaville. The Sunday forecast is too far into the future to mean much.