Boat still operating in GMT time, so I have no idea on what time it really is, its dark and its my shift, 0100-0400 GMT seems late or early, but I just checked local time and its only 9pm, so we should be getting ready to go party! That is still at least a day away.

Another great day, sunny, calm seas, light winds – so much so that we took down the spinnaker and tried to use one engine for awhile (30mins). The engine at low RPM was barely doing better than the spinnaker, so put the sail back up, and an hour or two later the winds had come back up to over 10 knots so that the spinnaker would stay flying. We did change sides of the boat we were running the spinnaker on when we dropped it, which gave us a better run at our course.

Ham and Cheese omelets for breakfast – we still have lots of egs, you buy them by the flat with 30 eggs per flat. I think we have 2 flats left after 3 weeks on the run.

Ran the generator, made some water, cleaned up the bilge in the port engine room, mounted the bilge switch that was just floating around. Used the shore cable to move the Generator to the bow, so that all the noise went down wind away from us – much better to relax away from the noise.

Scallopini de Pollo in a lemon button sauce for dinner, came out pretty good. Again no left overs, so thats a good sign.

Overall it seemed like a slow day on the miles front but we are within 200 miles now, and the wind picked up after dark, and we are surfing down some waves at 11 knots straight toward the finish line. Started to checking the paperwork to make sure we have everything we need to enter St Lucia, and know where to go.

Christine is ready for some girl chat, she has had enough of the testosterone on board. I offered to paint my nails if that’d help, but don’t really think thats what she had in mind.

The master toilet is broke today, Marvin fixed it once, it broke again, I fixed it – it should work for now. Not a fun job, but when something breaks you gotz to fix it. I’m really surprised they let me cook dinner tho.. *smile* It was just the flush pedal that needed some adjustment, so it was not a very nasty job… but it could have been.

We have a report from one on Ron’s buddies that we are ahead of 143 of the 200 boats that started in the ARC. We are expecting to see some boats but still haven’t seen any. With 200 miles left to go, they should be around here somewhere, maybe tomorrow we’ll see a couple. Course we did use our engines quite a bit the first week, so its not really fair to compare our position against those that only sailed and left 3 days before us.

Crew is really getting anxious about having someone else cook some food and clean up after us. Marvin and Ron are ready to get home after being gone for over 2 months. Christine wants to stay here till after Christmas – but neither of us have vacation left and some of these extra days are unpaid time off.

It still looking like a Wednesday arrival – in the dark of course – so now hoping for clear skies too!

Is that Rum I smell, Barbados is over there to the left of us right now. We’d stop there first if we had more time. Trade wind sailing is cool, the wakes behind us go up and over the waves as we surf down the waves and up the next one.

Course over ground: 271 Speed over ground: 8.7kn Total miles through water: 731 Miles to destination: 191 kn (as a crow).

I know that once we hit land we will all miss the sound of the waves, the rocking of the boat, and the beauty of the evening sky (did I just write that?).  I know I will miss the shooting stars that have been greeting me every night for the last 8 night shifts, I will miss the sight of the kites flying and I will miss the peacefulness of the sail with the kite.  But until we get on land, all I want to do is see land!

We had a pretty little bird fly into our cabin last night and she hung out by the navigation station for at least 6 hours – what a nice surprise and blessing.

Keep Keeping On. Up at day break to set the big spinnaker, after a slow night under jib alone. Whoosh and off we went, back up to knocking off the miles.

Talked Christine into doing breakfast again, Flap Jacks for all.

After a few hours, the wind piped up, and we really weren’t able to stay on course with the big spinnaker up, so it was time to take it down. Down it came without any issues other than a little crew confusion. So a quick crew meeting, so that everyone does a defined role and not everyone trying to do all the roles at the same time. One at the helm, manages the steering, one at the bow to manage the sock and sail, one at the tack line and one at the spinnaker sheet, and one at the spinnaker halyard, opps might be one short here..

Sailed along with normal sails, 1 reef in the main, as we had just had 24 knots of wind and full jib. After getting back on course the wind was only putting out 16 knots. Now we needed more sail. Frustrating, few minuets trying to get the best out of the sails, we had course, but slow speeds. 30 minutes later, we are raising the spinnaker again, this time we can keep course and all is good.

Beautiful day of sailing, and the little Honda generator replenished our batteries in 3 hrs, so it was nice quiet day with lots of water rushing under the keels.

We had bought some ‘long life’ bread in the Canaries, the morning we were leaving. Its some vacuum sealed stuff, looked normal when we got it, took a package out today and it looked like it had been through a decompression chamber. It however made some pretty good panini sandwiches for lunch. Might have to do that again soon.

Saw a sailboat today, they had white sails, off our starboard side, then they hoisted a red spinnaker for a few hours. We tried to call them by “red spinnaker, red spinnaker this is blue spinnaker” but no one answered. We were just going to ask, “Pardon me, do you have any Grey Poupon?”. They put the spinnaker away and headed more south than us, and just like that we are all alone out here, at least visually.

While cooking pizza for dinner, I took a look at the Ralph the salted pig leg, and it had started growing some stuff, so instead of waiting till we were sure we had enough food for the rest of the trip, executive decision to feed jaws some pork. It sunk like a rock! Pizza and some rum to celebrate under 400 miles to go.

Nice night, couple of clouds, bright moon, lots of stars, calm seas and spinnaker still up, and running on course. Very peaceful.

Currently estimating a Wednesday arrival

Course over ground: 265 Speed over ground: 8.1kn Total miles through water: 542 Miles to destination: 352 kn (as a crow).