Day #11
All good on board as the final night shift of this leg of the adventure.
After a motor sail yesterday that finally turned into a real sail at night, the morning light brought another adventure. The squall line was 6 miles long. No matter what we tried we couldn’t get to the upwind side of the squall in time. Yank down some more canvas, double reefed main and jib and power through the wall. No sun or horizon most of the day, we were rewarded with a nice fresh water rinse of the boat for what seemed like hours.
Squalls bring wind and rain, this guy was no different, the wind now behind us, became a run, and turned to directly downwind at sunset. In order to make the way point around the island we setup wing on wing. A following 2 meter sea, and 20 knots of wind pushing us along directly toward where we want to go. Not a favorite point of sail lots of risk of accidental jibes. Auto is handling the downwind run very well, and the main is prevented from the accidental jibe.
Tonight should mark the last night shift as it looks like at sunrise we will be just north of the island and take a few hours to head to the west side to find the ‘marked’ entrance. There is an entrance on this side of the reef, but with the winds and waves and darkness, we are not gonna try that route. We will take the longer route as it looks marked and the sleep deprived sailor needs all things to his advantage when getting next to hard things to bounce into, under and above the water.
Another sunset Christine captured, the full resolution photo is spectacular.
48 of 1414 miles left to go. [realtime]