80 nautical miles

When I woke up, we were already underway, just entering the Albemarle Sound. It was a nice, sunny day with no clouds in sight. We had autopilot on and were cruising along with our jib up. Suddenly, there was a scraping sound and the boat lost its speed- it felt like we hit something. We all ran to the railing just in time to see a channel marker pass by close enough to touch! We checked our hull for damage. The paint was scratched about halfway down the hull and some fiberglass right by the deck was torn up. The rub rail had a copious amount of rust on it too. Luckily, the rub rail saved the hull from even more fiberglass damage! Overall, the damage wasn't too bad and we were able to keep sailing. We sailed till 7:30 pm when we anchored and took quick showers. Dinner was yummy and it was nice to get to bed early.

Note to avoid hitting a channel marker: check your autopilot destination point! When clicking on the screen, the nav plotter will often times jump to the nearest navigational warning, thinking that you wanted to see information from warning/nav aid. The same thing happens when you are selecting your autopilot course. In our case, the point jumped to a channel marker. Additionally, we had our jib up with limits visibility on one side. This was why we didn't see the channel marker coming. This could be avoided by regularly checking under/around/in front of the jib!