Dancing with Squalls, today was the day to avoid the squalls. Got wet a little, the bright side the squalls brought some short lived wind but wind is wind. Able to sail during the squalls, probably turned motor on and off a dozen times today.
All good on the Shack, warmed up during the, shorts and t-shirt for a while. When night time and the squalls approached, they were with some pretty chilly breezes. Nothing much going on but sleep, eat, take shift keeping eyse on the boat and whats happening with the wind/waves and the squalls.
We have officially been on every point of sail on this trip, and if you start counting from Valdivia we have have used every sail we have on board, main has been in all but the 3rd reef position, which is reserved for serious winds of 45knots. upwind, downwind, sidewind (one of those is not a sailors term) but we have done it. 🙂
And hopefully we have only another 5 or 6 days till Easter. Definitely will be wind dependent tho.
674 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]
At 3/23/2019 @ 1:55 AM UTC Our position: 30°44.10’S, 097°14.85’W Traveling 4.6 heading 277T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-30.73500,-97.24750

Nick Cage double feature today, still low winds and waves lasted all night. Some deep sleep by both of us, slightly different schedule than normal with longer sleeps. Slept in past breakfast today so made eggs for a brunch during “Raising Arizona”.
The wind and waves tried to return, started touching 10 knots and that pushes the boat along nicely for the second feature of “Snowden”.
Before “Snoden” finished the AIS alarms went crazy. What? Someone? Something else out here? Low and behold our second and third vessels on this journey. 2 Spanish fishing boats were out fishing, one of which zig-zagged in our direction causing multiple collision alarms. Never really was close to us, several miles away most of the time, be could see the ‘deadliest catch’ style fishing boat out running in circles.
Tonight will mark the 1/2 way point somewhere just after midnight. We still have our clocks on Chile time, just to keep consistent. At this point the time zone is at least 3 hours off. The GPS says it is 5pm, our Chile time says 8 pm. It is easier to remember one time conversion when wondering what time it is back home without changing with every time zone we cross. That and the shift times don’t change. The sunrise and sunset are where the confusion comes in. Sunrise used to be 7am, but is getting later and later on our clocks, its now 9am. 🙂
All good on board, Burgers and Pringles for dinner. Eating too many snacks on night shifts as the fruits are being consumed. Down to the last avocado, probably finish that tomorrow.
Sailing full sails now. Wind on beam but barely 10 knots of breeze. We shall see if it holds through the night.
Cheers
832 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]

Wednesday morning, start of day #5.
Lots of good hard sleep last night. A pretty boring, uneventful night. Just after dinner the spinnaker folded, the wind sort of returned enough to fly again. On the second fold just before dark there was no reviving the flying. Just a huge wet kleenex hanging from the mast. One of the easiest ways to take down a spinnaker is to have no wind in the sail.
Put Bertha back in its sleeping bag and turned on the engines and thats how the night went. One engine making some electricity and pushing us slowly toward the destination. Seems the forecasted wind ‘hole’ had shown up early and not expected to fill back in until Friday the 22nd.
We will try to find some way to sail but without wind it’ll probably be pretty fruitless. Looking at the jib right now its starting to show signs needing to be put away too, had some wind in it over night but just enough to keep it from flapping.
All is well, might be a double feature movie day. Any suggestions – might have to break out ‘Captain Ron’ and see how many new phrases we can pick up. “If its gonna happen its gonna happen out there” or “We’ll just pull in and ask for directions”

1610 of 1624 miles left to go. [realtime]
At 3/20/2019 @ 11:50 AM UTC Our position: 32°09.89’S, 090°32.76’W Traveling 5.0 heading 285T
Google says we are here www.google.com/maps/place/-32.16483,-90.54600