Lots of rain and squalls today with the jib out ½ way we were still making decent time and VMG.  I stayed inside reading most of the day and didn’t make it outside until my shift. I had to get my foul weather gear back out and on my body only to have the sun came out for me – love that.

The crew was having a tough time getting along today – after all it has been 2 months since the first two left their homes, boarded Sugar Shack and started this journey.  That is a long time to be on the same boat with one person.

We realized that thanx to these trade winds we will not run out of food or fuel – we are doing fine and planned well – thank goodness.  The biggest problem now is that we will run out of snacks – I did not buy enough.  I seem to be in charge of stocking the fridge, making tea, stocking and placing evening snacks for the night shift and cleaning.  Yeah me.

I’ve started feeding Matt the idea of staying in St Lucia through Christmas but know it will be a hard sell as we are already on unpaid time off –

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).

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 2^nd time we noticed some tears on the kite so we took her down to tape them up, the 3^rd 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.