Ah Saturday, our original flights home are tomorrow, Sunday the 12th. We still have about 500 miles to go.

Woke up at first light to see if we could carry the large spinnaker, and yes we can. Pulled the big-un out of the bow, and started inspecting the lines and noticed that one of the shackles that goes at the top of the spinnaker sock had gone awol. Unpack the bag looking for the needle in the spinnaker to no avail. This shackle is all of about a 1/2 inch – nothing else on this boat is remotely that small, we have 3 or 4 inch everything to support these loads. Looking everywhere for a bolt or screw that we can use (takes an hour or more), we finally settle on a cotter pin, bent to lock in the pulley that raises and lowers the spinnaker sock.

The hoist goes without issues, Christine driving in to the wind, me pulling on the sock on the foredeck, and Marvin minding the sheets in the aft. And just like that we are making good time again.

Breakfast of cereal and juice, nothing fancy after a spinnaker hoist, but knowing that we’ll have to have lunch after cereal for breakfast. I hardly call cereal a meal.

With the nice day, I took the wet dead spinnaker out of the bag to dry out and inspect the damage. The sail is shapped like an “A” complete with the cross bar in the “A” the sail ripped above the crossbar all the way down to the bottom of the A’s feet. We’ll see if they want to repair the 10 year old mold smelling spinnaker or suggest a full replacement at a sail loft in St. Lucia. Either way a couple of lessons learned, let go when it tries to rip the rope out of your hand, when Christine says we need to do something, do it. *smile* (Some might think I should have learned this already)

Cracking along @ 9-13 knots depending on waves we watch the wind speed intently when on watch, the winds are forecast to go light on us, and we don’t want to injure this soldier as well.

Some pita sandwiches complete with jalapenos, lettuce, tomato, and this wonderful English cheddar that Ron found in Gibraltar.

We has used a lot of electricity running Auto and Radar all night but waited till my shift to start the Generator to make some electricity and make some fresh water. Took about 5 hours on the Honda to top us back up, noisy little bugger but still better than running the big diesel engines.

The water maker makes water at about 16 gallons an hour, so to fill our 80 gallon tanks it runs quite a while. It takes the fresh sea water and pumps it through a membrane that is so fine only water gets through, the salt and other impurities can’t pass through the membrane. I forget the rate exactly but it has to pump several gallons through to get a cup of fresh water. We cook, drink, bath with this water and no one has gone mad cow yet, so it can’t be all bad.

Christine’s was on watch when the limits for the spinnaker were starting to broach. Executive decision to take down the spinnaker was hard as they apparent wind was just over 15k, but we have more slow days ahead. Dropped the spinnaker without issues.

I took the opportunity to explore sailing with a little main and jib. Triple reefed the main, so it was pretty small. Then pulled out the jib, not going to win any races that way. probably 1 knot slower than jib alone as the main sort of blocked the wind to the jib, on this deep reach. Didn’t get a chance to really try to tweak it as the crew looked real disappointed in going from 10+ knots to 5 knots. Back under jib alone still doing 5 knots, but with bursts to 7 over the waves – I’m not convinced yet that jib alone is faster.

Peroggi for dinner, basically a polish dish that resembles ravioli with sautéed onions and mushrooms in a butter sauce. Wasn’t sure how the crew would like it, but it was gone in a flash.

Beautiful night, little sticky tho, 1/4 moon in the sky shimmering over the water, scattered clouds to reflect the moon light and ghosting along at 5-7 knots. Might watch a movie on the iTouch to pass the time on to night. If we were racing we’d be raising the spinnaker now, as the conditions are great right now, relatively flat ocean and winds just under 20 knots.

Crew is doing well, predictions are being made as to the land fall day, Wednesday seems to be the odds favorite. Sun is hot, getting a tan, needed shade after my watch. Supposedly we somewhere in the mix of the ARC boats with about 40% behind us, but haven’t seen another sailing boat in more than a week, the report is that there are at least 2 boats within 100 miles of us.

Course over ground: 251 Speed over ground: 6.0kn Total miles through water: 351 Miles to destination: 505 kn (as a crow).