All night under jib alone and this morning we are still running under jib alone, its 25 knots of wind and some pretty lumpy seas with big swells around 15 feet or so. I so really want to put the spinnaker back up, but the winds are a bit to high to chance ripping it with still a long ways to go, so we jib it along.

County breakfast this morning, scrambled eggs, home fries and bacon with a cucumber garnish.

Pretty boring day, but then again I was tired after not getting much sleep last night with the spinnaker change and some shifty weather after that. So I took a good nap during the day to catch up.

The lonely orange had been sitting alone in the fruit bowl for the last few days, the last piece of fresh fruit. Sitting there all alone, no one seemed to notice. Damn it was good! Now we are out of fresh fruits, still have veggies and meats in the fridge and freezer – but the last of the fruit has been polished off.

After my nap the seas had calmed down a bit, so did the wind as well. It was also almost dinner time. So I suggested we put the small spinnaker backup and see how it flies. Attempt #1, launched with no problem right to the top, but then the spinnaker sheet was noticed to be run through the life lines, so we immediately brought the spinnaker back down, and re-tied the sheet correctly. Now ready for launch #2, up after this wave. Do the spinnaker sock rope sure is tough to come out this time, I hung on and was launched about 10 feet off the deck, but I held on to the sock rope. Hind sight, probably should have let it go, as the spinnaker was now up and proudly sporting 2 rope burns. The rope and weakend the or rope burned 2 streaks on the sail, so now its a wounded soldier, so down it comes again for some sail tape to re-enforce its burns. After bringing it down, we found quite a few places to put sail tape, but we hope it holds for a while. As it is backup and flying after attempt #4, #3 was just a little twist that had to be ironed out before the successful launch #4.

Explanation: the spinnaker sock is a tube, not unlike your tube socks from the 1980s, that the spinnaker lives in, to launch the spinnaker you scrunch to sock up at top of the mast and pull the spinnaker out of sock. In the end it looks like leg warmers at the top of the mast with the spinnaker sticking out below em.

So dinner was an hour and a half late because someone wanted a little more speed. Doh, Oh well. The Dorado tacos from a few days ago were so good, we repeated the effort with a variation on the spices for cooking the fish and the salsa would be lacking cilantro – so we doubled up the garlic to keep the vampires away. Awesome.

This evening, a nice night, a little balmy, with thunderstorms chasing us down. Light sprinkle here and there and some wind sifts, but auto is handling them nicely and radar is keeping an eye out for the squalls or rain storms. All this technology is sucking lots of electricity out of the batteries, we’ll have to run the little honda generator again in the morning.

Crew is getting a good nights sleep, pretty restful sailing tonight, good motion of boat only an occasional rumbling when we get overtaken by a wave from the stern. All is good.

Course over ground: 263 Speed over ground: 9.4kn Total miles through water: 926 Miles to destination: 812 kn (as a crow).