This is about the end of our planned trip, we should be there by now according to best laid plans. Course you can see that we are still 650 miles away, and not heading exactly south toward St Lucia as the crow flies. The waves and wind are not cooperating.

Oh what a night and day a few minutes make.

Mother Nature sneezed last night then got so upset she cried all night and day.

I signed off, after calling yesterday boring, to go to sleep. Christine wakes me and says the winds are too high, I ask about apparent wind on the spinnaker and its well below the 15kn guideline we set. So we wait that one out, the next time she wakes me up, its now blowing 28kn and with a 18kn on the sail. Okay now its time for action of some sorts. Take a look at the radar and a whole big storm is behind this one we are in now, really time to do something. Spinnaker is still holding strong, the tape is doing its job and its flying well, but in some stronger winds than we would like. I start the engines, also a sign to the crew that they are needed, to let them warm up for some action. Within 30 seconds the spinnaker collapses and refills and continues to fly. Now really time to get crew up to take it down. Ask Christine to make sure that Marvin and Ron are on the move, and no sooner finish that sentence. Mother Nature pealed the center right out of the kite, like it was a perforated cutout in a childs book. All that was left was an empty triangle windo with about 2 inch strips along all the boarders, and all the material hanging down below. The tape repair had held but the seams on the sides gave out, and now its under the boat. I yelled to make sure the engines were in neutral, as I ran forward to pull the sail out of the water, or what I could of it. Then Ron made it forward to help followed by Marvin. The sail only came so far,it was stuck on the bow, and under the boat. Since everyone was pulling at the sail, I went and released the halyard and sheets to bring the sock and swivel back down to the boat. After lots of trial and error we were able to pull the right part of the sail and get it on board, took like 20mins but we have all the pieces. And just like that we are back under sail under jib alone and doing 8kts.

Awake, Marvin took the last mins of Christine’s shift in the rain, and the weather hasn’t let up since.

Ron cooked an italian breakfast, of eggs and bacon – we have lots of eggs left.

We have been rocking to all songs that contain “rain” in the title, so much so that when “It raining men” came on, I couldn’t help from showing my white boy moves. 15 foot seas, are higher than the reefing points on the jib, and overhead when standing at the highest point on the stern. They make Christine a little nervous, but her vulcan death grip is keeping her on board, after about 20mins she was able to relax however and have dinner out at the helm position in the rain. Chicken noodle soup does warm the soul.

There is starging to be some room in the fridge and freezer for more goodies, but there is no store in sight. Not time to get creative with meals yet as we still have lots of planned meals and staples onboard.

Crew is anxious, and wondering where todays weather came from, 39kt of wind, sideways rain, and huge seas came from – but we all rolled with it (literally) and are still rolling along. Also worried about setting foot on solid ground for the first time in 3 weeks. There are going to be lots of funny walking folks in St Lucia, not sure but I bet that island is a floater.

Course over ground: 275 Speed over ground: 6.1kn Total miles through water: 150 (got reset) Miles to destination: 663 kn (as a crow).

All night under jib alone and this morning we are still running under jib alone, its 25 knots of wind and some pretty lumpy seas with big swells around 15 feet or so. I so really want to put the spinnaker back up, but the winds are a bit to high to chance ripping it with still a long ways to go, so we jib it along.

County breakfast this morning, scrambled eggs, home fries and bacon with a cucumber garnish.

Pretty boring day, but then again I was tired after not getting much sleep last night with the spinnaker change and some shifty weather after that. So I took a good nap during the day to catch up.

The lonely orange had been sitting alone in the fruit bowl for the last few days, the last piece of fresh fruit. Sitting there all alone, no one seemed to notice. Damn it was good! Now we are out of fresh fruits, still have veggies and meats in the fridge and freezer – but the last of the fruit has been polished off.

After my nap the seas had calmed down a bit, so did the wind as well. It was also almost dinner time. So I suggested we put the small spinnaker backup and see how it flies. Attempt #1, launched with no problem right to the top, but then the spinnaker sheet was noticed to be run through the life lines, so we immediately brought the spinnaker back down, and re-tied the sheet correctly. Now ready for launch #2, up after this wave. Do the spinnaker sock rope sure is tough to come out this time, I hung on and was launched about 10 feet off the deck, but I held on to the sock rope. Hind sight, probably should have let it go, as the spinnaker was now up and proudly sporting 2 rope burns. The rope and weakend the or rope burned 2 streaks on the sail, so now its a wounded soldier, so down it comes again for some sail tape to re-enforce its burns. After bringing it down, we found quite a few places to put sail tape, but we hope it holds for a while. As it is backup and flying after attempt #4, #3 was just a little twist that had to be ironed out before the successful launch #4.

Explanation: the spinnaker sock is a tube, not unlike your tube socks from the 1980s, that the spinnaker lives in, to launch the spinnaker you scrunch to sock up at top of the mast and pull the spinnaker out of sock. In the end it looks like leg warmers at the top of the mast with the spinnaker sticking out below em.

So dinner was an hour and a half late because someone wanted a little more speed. Doh, Oh well. The Dorado tacos from a few days ago were so good, we repeated the effort with a variation on the spices for cooking the fish and the salsa would be lacking cilantro – so we doubled up the garlic to keep the vampires away. Awesome.

This evening, a nice night, a little balmy, with thunderstorms chasing us down. Light sprinkle here and there and some wind sifts, but auto is handling them nicely and radar is keeping an eye out for the squalls or rain storms. All this technology is sucking lots of electricity out of the batteries, we’ll have to run the little honda generator again in the morning.

Crew is getting a good nights sleep, pretty restful sailing tonight, good motion of boat only an occasional rumbling when we get overtaken by a wave from the stern. All is good.

Course over ground: 263 Speed over ground: 9.4kn Total miles through water: 926 Miles to destination: 812 kn (as a crow).

Finally a spinnaker run. Carried the big asymmetrical kite all night long boat was really moving. We put a pretty good dent in the miles left to go, knocked out a 200+ mile day. At daybreak when you could see everything, it probably wasn’t the smartest move, to run the big kite all night. I saw some 25kt winds, and Marvin saw 27 as dark clouds passed in the night. This morning when a 26kt breeze blew through, I looked up to see the unstayed top of the mast bend by what seemed to be a foot or more. DOH, that’s enough of that, we need that mast to hoist any of the available sails, so we down sized to the symmetrical spinnaker that runs at the fractional (3/4 of the mast, instead of the very top) point where there are stays to support the mast. Kept pretty much the same speed and was more forgiving in the rolling seas that were building.

Bacon and Eggs for breakfast after the spinnaker change.

Awesome run, making about 10 miles and hour most of the day. Little rain storm to wash off the boat, no other boats in sight all day.

Pasta with meat sauce, basically goulash with what ever looked like it would go. The quantity that I cooked, I thought for sure there would be leftovers, guess the crew was hungry even though no one really had a preference for dinner, double helpings were had by all.

Even Mr. Dorado decided to stop by for dinner, as I’m plating up the grub, the fishing line goes off. Pause, turn off stove, attend line, bring fish aboard, resume dinner. This time I learned how to filet the fish, our freezer is stocked with lots of Dorado, guess we’ll have to have some for breakfast, or at least for dinner tomorrow.

Woke up for a little early for my shift, as the boat was zoomin through the water. As I’m walking up, AIS collision alert goes off, I have it set on 10 range so any boat with in 10 miles goes to alert. No big deal, its 10 miles crossing in front of us. We are doing 14kt of boat speed in almost 30 knots of wind. Way over the night time rules that were setup before dark. So its time to take down the small symmetrical spinnaker, down it comes, nothing too difficult but the tack line goes through the block and is running under the boat, Marvin quickly pulls that in, but now the tack line is no longer on the starboard of the boat, we’ll have to fix that in the morning. Anyone know how to push a noodle through a 50 foot straw? Thats where the take line goes.

Running under jib alone, we are still making some 8kt times, but also the wind is dying back down, if we had the tack line, might consider putting the small spinnaker backup.

Crew is dreaming of Caribbean sun, well we already had that today, nice and hot in the sun, cool in the shade. Also enjoying knocking off miles as this is what the winds were supposed to be like for the whole trip, not just the very end.

Course over ground: 258 Speed over ground: 9.1kn Total miles through water: 719 Miles to destination: 988 kn (as a crow).