Beautiful day, huge rolling waves, what you might picture the middle of the ocean like.

Raised the main sail to 3rd reef position, we did have 25+kt of wind (oh and the mess with the flag and lazy jacks wouldn’t let us raise anymore sail either, but didn’t need any more sail either. Shut down one of the engines and motor sailed up and down the 15 foot swells. Tried without the engine but speed dropped too much to make it over the swells.

Tried some cereal for breakfast, special K was alright, but hardly filling. So around lunch (shortly after breakfast) made a couple of wraps that the crew split along with a cheese platter with some yummy white cheddar.

Sit back and let the boat go. Staring up every so often to see how the heck, I was gonna solve the mess above, in 25kn of wind and 15 foot seas. Nothing sounded safe or pleasant, about being tossed around on a string 35 feet above the water.

All day thinking of how to get up there safely, finally the winds were dropping into the 20s and high teens, so we were going to need more canvas. The courage had grown to a necessity. So we dropped the main, ran a safety line through the tack of the main (top of the sail) and hoisted the main back up to its reefed position. The safety line would be the guide to keep me close to the mast and not swinging wildly while being hoisted up on a spinnaker halyard. Probably took 30-45 mins to sort out the details while up there with one hand holding on for dear life as the boat rolled over the waves and the mast exaggerating every wave. I was able to untangle the flag and lazy jack, tie a new “D” ring in to the lazy jack and run a small line through the “D” ring to fix the lazy jacks from the deck – most likely tomorrow.

Christine said the winds went back to 22kt while I was up there, and the 15foot waves were a very good reason to hold on tightly. So if you are counting thats 3 times up the mast on this adventure so far, and of course more bruises were generated this time too!

So for dinner we were sailing sans engines, nice pasta with garlic chicken, and garlic bread. Fresh fruit is on its last few days, only a couple of oranges and apples left. Freezer is still stocked full with protein, lots of pasta and dried foods on board. Had to clean out some of the cilantro from the fridge as it was going bad, but fridge is still full of cheese and produce. The green tomatoes we bought ripened within 2 days, so they too are in the fridge.

Planned on sailing through the night, but when I woke for my shift 6hrs later we hadn’t made any miles toward the destination. I really should raise the rest of the main and keep on without an engine, but I’m lazy and its dark outside. We’ll raise it in the AM and see if we can get 7kt of boat speed from the 10kn of wind, but I doubt it.

Forecast matches the conditions still, so hopefully within 24hrs we’ll start to see the winds shift into a favorable direction and we can start knocking off some miles again.

Crew is good, all seem well rested tho lots of silence when book reading or just chilling out enjoying being but a small speck on a large ocean. Haven’t seen another vessel in 30+ hrs.

Course over ground: 237 Speed over ground: 4.9kn Total miles through water: 779 +650 = 1429 Miles to destination: 1628 kn if we were a bird.