Atlantic Crossing Day 9

The dance of the windex, at the top of the mast are some pointy things that point to the direction the wind is coming from. Ths morning they are doing 360 rotations, clockwise, counter clockwise almost like a corragraphed dance move. The wind is trying to figure out which way to blow as we motor on, no sails in the air.

We planned on 18 days so this should be 1/2 way but looking at the map and distance left to go its more like 1/4 the way and the weather doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. I guess the trade winds took the season off, bad economy equals less trade?

The morning shift is pretty easy with no waves and no wind. Christine is just waking up to take over the watch, as I get to go get some more sleep.

500 miles from anywhere, and on our port a ship shows up and its going to come within .1 miles of us crossing our path. Christine is going to get to do some avoidance. No problems, just duck down behind the big boy and we were on our way.

Today was probably the quintessential day at sea. Blue sky, Blue water, light wind and when we woke up, a tuna had decided to jump on our hook overnight. That brings an end to the 1100 mile drag of hooks with but a mere nibble. Well actually its the second nibble, but the other one was so huge, and put up a fight for a minute or two before deciding the hook didn’t taste quite right.

A small Bonita (tuna family) caught in the morning, cleaned and served for dinner, Ahi style with rice and green beens – yummy. Oh and cold beer to wash it all down. We also cut into the cured ham leg we brought on board, its like a fresh place to grab procuito, its a salty bacon kind of beef jerky. So when you is hungry, just slice off a chunk.

Christine didn’t want to tempt fate but still tried a piece of the Ahi, and said it was good. But seeing the whole process from start to finish probably had something to do with the trepidation.

Weather reports, or grib files are how we get weather reports, and the emails from Donald that help tremendously when we can’t get sailmail to bring down the large grib files. We view the weather arrows, see that tomorrow brings good weather, but notice that its not correct for the weather we are having today. So is it eternal optimism that we believe the weather report for tomorrow will be correct? Or just wishful thinking? Either way we are just doing what we can with the winds we have to keep on course to St. Lucia.

All in all, another restful day for the crew as we motor sailed again. We are down to 1/2 a tank of diesel so we’ll be pulling over at the next .. oh wait, so still hoping for some favorable winds soon.

Course over ground: 262 Speed over ground: 4.9kn Total miles through water: 439 (dunno what happened here, a time warp?) Miles to destination: 1908 kn if we were a bird.

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One thought on “Atlantic Crossing Day 9

  1. Heather

    Thinking of you guys today! What a fantastic adventure..keep the captains logs coming, Love to hear you guys are safe and having a great time

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