There's kind of stomach-churning lurch that happens. It's a sudden change in direction or speed that seems to catch you off-guard; it's a visceral thing. A twinge in your gut that something's not right.

We leave Mom's a day early to avoid crap weather between Schenectady and Hendersonville. We leave Hendersonville a day early to avoid crap weather. We have two checklists of things to get finished before we can step offshore again.

Hustle, hustle, hustle. Check. Check. Check.

Route? 27 hours. Hasn't changed. Check.

Route in all of the chart plotters? Check.

It's not like we're physically running from task to task. But there are a lot of tasks, a lot of items to check off.

Apple's Notes app and Reminders app are two wonderful tools for this. A shared note is almost as good as a board on Trello.com.

Job, job, job. Check. Check. Check.

Weather? Check. Again.

Well…

Not so fast. The window closed. We're suddenly NOT going.

<<Screech>> Lurch.

We were ready. We're still ready. We're not going, though. We're ready to go. But we're not moving.

This is stomach-churning for me. A 180° tack from hustle to relax isn't easy.

We're watching the weather and paying our marina bills by the week. We don't want to spend more than we need to (no refunds for leaving early.)

My job today is to actually relax and stop checking the weather on an hourly basis. St. Mary's is likely to have SCA (Small Craft Advisory) this weekend. We're not going anywhere until Monday at the earliest.

Breathe.