We officially fell below 1000 miles to go today – let the count down begin! We made another 200 mile day yesterday, look at us kicking butt. We had a little too much wind for the kit so we took her down and flew with the jib which still gave us 6-8 knots of boat speed. We all showered again today, but the water was a tad bit cold since we have not been running the engines (charging the batteries with the generator). But a shower is a shower – warm or not. I would rather take a cold shower and not have the engines running than a warm shower with them running!
It took us 3 times to put the kite back up, kind of funny to be honest. The first time the line got tangled with the dagger board, the 2nd time we noticed some tears on the kite so we took her down to tape them up, the 3rd time was a charm J
The trade winds are fantastic and make for great sailing. It makes such a difference to have the trade winds compared to what we experienced the first 2 weeks. If the entire trip were like this we would have made it in 12-14 days as planned and I would seriously consider doing the crossing again. As of now I am undecided as the first two weeks were not pleasant.
The waves are still very big, but with these winds and the spinnaker the boat moves differently across the water. She shimmies up the wave and then dances down the other side. They are big rollers but the movement is completely different. It is as if the boat and the water are dancing the same routine which makes it a lot more peaceful and actually a lot of “fun” (dare I say).
This trip has afforded me the pleasure of reading a lot of wonderful books including “Born to Run” and “The Help”. I’ve also read some silly non-thinking books, but I won’t mention those for fear of retribution J
During my shift we were flying the small kite and had pretty big winds. I know that the other boys never wake up Matt when they are supposed to (when the winds are too strong for the rig that we have set), but I always try to err on the side of caution. About 25 minutes after Matt hit the sheets I woke him up with concerns about the wind speed – he came up, checked it out and said we were ok. I go back to my shift perplexed but trusting Matt. About an hour later a squall came upon us increasing the winds a little more, so I woke Matt up again. I tried to hurry him out of his sleep stupor and he finally agreed that we need to take the spin down. He started the engines while I woke the crew and by the time I got back up to the deck, looked at the spinnaker – she gave in to the strength of the winds – pop! Ugh, what a bummer as I really liked that spinnaker. We all jumped into action as the spinnaker collapsed onto the deck and into the water, lines and all. It took us about 45 minutes to get the spinnaker under control (as it was pitch black outside), get the jib out and get the boat back to course. What a shift – time for bed.