Early post today, wide awake after my shift, and after having drug a fishing line for most of 470 miles it was the first time the reel had made a peep. Course only there was no fish to be landed, just the lure’s skirt was hiked up by the waves – and something did try to take a bit ouf the skirt, so back overboard for more dragging across the pond.

Lets see, we had quesidilas (I’ll figure out how to spell that later) for lunch with some left over turkey, think we are going to make some turkey noodle soup with the rest. Then we had a big ole batch of Carroll Shelby’s Chili, made with Turkish mystery meat, and corn bread – pretty yummy only a small portion of chili left for some late night snack.

Okay the weather has been delightful, sunny, brisk – when the sun is out its almost shorts and t-shirts, at night its still a bit cold – need jackets and long pants. This was supposed to be a trade winds run, meaning all the winds would push us to the islands, but so far we haven’t found the elusive trade winds. We were heading south to find the, but the forecast says they aren’t there, they also aren’t north, there are 2 low pressure zones on the forecast that says we should have no wind at all. I should love the forecast to be correct, because what we have here is 15-20kn right out of the west, of course that’s where we want to go. At this point its looking doubtful that we’ll be on time to St. Lucia to catch our flights – good thing they are fully changeable fares.

While everyone was asleep, I tacked the boat to head more north, with a little help from the autopilot as the jib sheets are about 20 feet apart, and you have to release one side before pulling the other back in. All in all pretty sucessful, the next one actually went smoother, told auto that I needed more time, and he slowed down – so it worked great, now heading back south of west-ish.

Too much sailing not enough electricity. On my shift, we were humming along quite nicely when I came up for my shift, the batteries were down 200ah, out of the 960 that we have on board, so we needed to put some back. Ron and I tried to get the little Honda generator plugged in and running, we were successful, but the electricity didn’t want to go in to the batteries that way, we’ll figure that out in the daylight. So we are motor sailing with one engine just to charge the batteries back to 4 dots on the link charge controller.

A little excitement, the crew on the other side of the boat got in a little heated discussion on the proper use of the toilet facilities, one liked the window open the other didn’t like the salt spray that sometimes made its way in to the latrine. Lasted only a few minutes and no feathers are ruffled.

Crew is good, everyone seems to be sleeping their fair share, as we bounce our way across the at Atlantic.

Course over ground: 235 Speed over ground: 6.4kn Total miles through water: 470 Miles to destination: 2434 kn if we were a bird.

Day 2 started out with great sailing and speed, but finished with the wind clocking around on to our nose and forcing some more motor sailing, we were not making much progress toward anything. We tried south, we tried west both resulting in about 3-4kt of forward progress under bare polls after dinner.

Compliments to the chef, English Turkey roasted to perfection, stuffing to die for made from stale bread that you had to cut with a chain saw. Gouda smashed potatoes and fresh carrots with brown sugar cause they kinda look like yams. Wind had died enough for the entire crew to sit in peace and have a typical Thanksgiving fest! Wine and Rum and Diets – course it was my time to sleep to what better way to get a good siesta in a bouncy boat than a good drink of grog.

As night fell the sky was cloudy and some big waves had come in, on my watch I was able to roll out a bit of jib and get back on course, and woke up Marvin to finally raise some of the main sail, about 2/3rds of it (second reef point) with 22kn of wind and pinching at about 37 degrees to the wind. Rolling along at 6-7 so we didn’t completely plow through the waves while the crew was sleeping. Christine came up to relieve me at 4am and its still pretty much still set like that now @ 10:40AM Zulu (GMT).

Boat is covered in salt, lots of spray over the bows when going over the short waves and smacking into the next one behind it. Nice sunny day, very lightly scattered clouds.

Crew is still doing well, just chillin out while the water passes under the keel.

Did find out that the Aggies were whipping up on the Longhorns, so that pretty much speaks the longhorn season, no?

Course over ground: 219 Speed over ground: 5.7kn Total miles through water: 334 Miles to destination: 2508kn if we were a bird.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!  We certainly have a lot to be thankful for – our beautiful boat arrived to us virtually unharmed, we are sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and we are healthy – tonight we should feast on a small Turkey, stuffing and more – should be great.  We’ve had beautiful weather – clear skies, small white clouds and gorgeous water.  We even started out with great wind, but it soon turned around on us and its strength evaded our sails. During the day, it was cold (even though it is beautiful) and I am wore long johns, long pants, jacket and hat (foul weather gear at night).  All I can say is thank goodness I bought new long john’s (they are not silk, but a new variety of material), new gloves, socks and ear warmers J

We lost sight of land about 11 hours after we left Gran Canarias and realize that heading South might delay our arrival, but it is the best route for now.  One thing we didn’t do, that I heard every crew should do prior to undertaking a long voyage is set “assignments” or “responsibilities”.  This way, no crew member is mistaken as to what is expected of them.  I think that part of the reason we have not done this is because Marvin and Ron have already established some sort of a routine during the first weeks of their passage and the other reason is because it is 3 men and me and I was overruled.  The good news is that there are some assumed roles.  Matt and Ron are the chefs, Marvin helps fix the head and check the engines, I am in charge of the inventory on the boat and cleaning and we all do the sailing thing – I hope this works out.

I tried to send a note on the computer, but it did not work out so well for me – it brings on the sea yuckies!

Since my shift ends at 7p, about a half hour after dinner it makes it really easy to go straight to bed after jotting down my thoughts in my journal.