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.

Originally, shifts were proposed such that each person would work a shift and the next day the shift would change by an hour or two – so that nobody got stuck working bad hours.  But, that did not appeal to me as I need structure and consistency so we decided that everyone would work 2 three hour shifts.  Matt took the worse shift 1a-4a (1p-4p) and I took 4a-7a (4p-7p), then Marvin 7a-11a (7p-11p) and Ron 11a-1 (11p-1a).  This way everyone worked 3 hours and then was off for 9 hours – my idea, this will work better!

I put on the patch yesterday afternoon which is good for 3 days and decided to only take the meclazine (prescription oral medicine) in addition to the patch on bad weather days.  I am not going to get sick!

The boys tossed out their fishing lines with the hopes of catching some dinner.  Matt has a line out and Ron has 2 lines (a bumper or tease line and then another line).

Ron was the chef during the first part of the crossing and Matt is typically the chef on our sailing trips so they were head butting it out to determine who did what – no seriously, they are both so laid back it never mattered.  I think they were just glad they did not have the sole responsibility to feed everyone.

Matt and I are trying to get the feel for the boat again, get used to the 2 new personalities that have lived on our boat for the past 6 weeks, remember not to put the TP in the toilet J and relearn where we stored everything.

Heading south to Cape Verde where we’ve heard the ARC fleet went as well – we are all trying to catch some wind for the crossing.

My first night on shift and I bounded out of bed like a jack rabbit – had enough sleep and was ready to take over for Matt.  I dressed in my warmest clothes, plugged in my I-pod and got the sail update. It was bitter freaking cold. I had long johns, foul weather jumper and jacket, ski socks, ski gloves, ear covers and a hat and I was still chattering at away.   But the sky was amazingly beautiful full of billions of stars.  It was pretty easy sailing, but that was most likely because we didn’t have much wind or boat speed (average 7 knots).

We got up early to hit the fuel dock only to realize there were two 100+ monohauls tied up and making no signs of moving any time soon.  The fuel dock people motioned us to raft up next to the pretty blue one.  It was weird dragging the giant fuel line across their boat and a bit awkward walking across their boat to get to the fuel dock, but you do what you got to do.

I had to clear Matt and I from the island (we got our passports stamped when we flew into Gran Canarias, where Marvin and Ron did not get their passports stamped when they arrived via the boat).  Evidently, the marina boat clearance office only clears the boat in and out of the country.  They do not clear the people or stamp your passports. If you need to clear immigration (get your passport stamped), you must go to the police station which is 6 1/2 miles away.  In addition, when the Sugar Shack cleared into Gran Canarias, Marvin did not receive much paper work we are hoping clearing out and clearing into St Lucia won’t be a problem.  Of course I did not know that the marina boat clearance office was not immigration as I waited over an hour to see someone. Once I got inside the nice lady informed me that I had to take our passports to the immigration office located at the police station, she handed me a map and said it was too far to walk.  I headed back to the fuel dock and noticed our sweet boat was no longer rafted up to the big beautiful blue boat and went back to the docks by the clearance office – I started hailing the coast guard when I noticed Ron in our dingy at the dock. I told Matt what had to be done and off I went to find a cab. I decided to start walking in the general direction and no cab could be found.  About 4 ½ miles into my walk I hailed a cop car and tried to explain my dilemma.  The nice officer loaded me up into the back seat of their car and the driver made some comment about being a “taxi driver” (even with the language barrier, I understood that much).  Luckily there was someone else there who could translate for me as they did not want to stamp our passports – after 20 minutes of back and forth, our passports were stamped and I was headed back to the boat – another 6 ½ miles back.  Unfortunately I could not find a cab or a police car that would help me, but I made it back a little over 3 hours later and off we go to cross the Atlantic at 11:46am (zulu).

We decided to head South with the wind on our nose to avoid some storms, this would allow Matt and I a chance to get our sea legs and get used to 24/7 sailing.  We had little to no wind – where were the trade winds everyone told us about (trade wind come from the stern and push you forward)?