The painters tape on the jib car worked, the nut came loose again and the painters tape held the sail. 🤪 That’s some magic green tape! (Might actually been the dyneema/ stronger than steel rope behind the tape: but I won’t tell if you don’t)

The morning continued with normal working sails, main sail and jib/genoa. Easy stuff. The mornings weather update showed lighter winds around midday.

The forecast actually showed 2+ days of motoring. Oh well, thems the breaks. Break out the light air sails, the spinnakers.

First up, a trusty white 125m2 spinnaker. Started with this one, to make sure we remembered how. Raised the sail at the top edge of the wind range where we would normally be taking it down. The forecast said it was going to be going lighter. So let’s go, goes up, flies well a couple of bobbles getting it trimmed, but all flying nice. After getting it soaring, the winds were indeed decreasing.

So… let’s fly a bigger one, 170m2.

A fresh, never been flown before. A newer bigger version of the 125m2, what can go wrong?

After a struggle getting it out of the forward hatch, setting up and launching was no problem. A beautiful sail flying in 10 knots of breeze. As luck would have it it’s getting near dark. So decision time for night time sail choice..

As much as I would like to run the spinnaker all night, given the nature of night sailing and dodging squalls it’s got to come down. Return the smaller one to service and set a high wind alarm at 16 knots.

As it gets dark, there goes the alarm..oh it can’t be real, just reset the alarm. Damn went off again, down she comes @ dusk. After getting all squared away, back to working sails. Which eventually get put away in favor of the iron sail. 5 knots of breeze and the swell no sail was going to stay full.

There is going to be a lot of rest in our future as the forecast seemed to forget about the wind in our neck of the ocean.

Butter chicken for dinner while checking into the SSB radio net listening to where the other boats are heading and what kind of conditions they have.

Still knocking out the miles, under 400 miles to go, and Bonus, the lack of Southwest winds, waves are getting smaller AND it’s warming up!

Definitely going the right direction.