Spinnaker. Thats all I can say, up at first light, was still light winds, 12-14 kts, exchanged all the normal canvas for one spinnaker. So we put away the main sail, rolled up the jib, and deployed an asymetrical spinnaker. It is huge.

We have a 70 foot mast, and the A-kite goes all the way to the top and can touch the water if it wasn’t full of air. The length of the bottom of the triangle is longer than the length of the boat. With the almost following seas we are rocking and rolling right along, we have covered 174 miles since yesterdays update. With wind gusts into the low 20s we have seen boat speed of up to 14kts and pretty much on course.

Cereal for breakfast while the spinnaker was getting used to its new spot pulling the boat forward.

We tried to use the SSB to call one of Captain Ron’s buddies but were not successful. Could hear some auto part dealers from Oklahoma swapping car parts tho. I’m going to have to get a HAM license to understand all the features of the SSB.

Sandwich for lunch snack on a nice sunny after noon. Shorts were attire all day, little sun burn.

I took my day watch on the lido deck, took one of the remote auto pilots to the foredeck and chilled in the shadow of the spinnaker on the nets while on watch. The kaos of the stern of the boat sounds rushing through the water are missing when on the front of the boat on a run. At 9 kts of boat speed, I think we could surf the double up wake that the hulls make behind the boat, just like on Lake Austin, except turning around to get a fallen surfer would take quite some time.

Pork chops, garlic gouda mashed potatoes and a salad Missy would be almost proud of for dinner. Would have made the required 7 elements to the salad, but the cilantro had seen better days.

Christine mentioned that it would be nice to see land again, but then laughed as she said I guess that is still several days away.

The following seas and wind from behind are giving us a quick run, and the motion is like the Ab Chair on TV. A little swing to the left, swing to the right as the quartering waves catch and pass us and the wind pulls us back on course.

I slept all the way till my 1am shift as I guess I was tired, getting up early to set the spinnaker, and Christine woke me to jibe the sails during her shift last night. So she was tired today as well. The crew is still in good spirits especially since we have found some favorable winds.

Course over ground: 276 Speed over ground: 8.7kn Total miles through water: 478 Miles to destination: 1189 kn (as a crow).

Oh my goodness, we had a great day.  We finally got the trade winds, through up the spinnaker and experienced the type of day that everyone told us about.  This is how the crossing is supposed to be, this is sailing!  My spirits have lifted just because the winds shifted.  There was no engine noise, no generator, water maker or washer machine – just the wind in our sails and the sea under our boat – perfect.  To top it off there was a gorgeous rainbow off the port side of the boat at the horizon – it’s like Mother Nature is telling us to have a great day.  We averaged about 20+ knots of wind, 10-12 knots of boat speed and great VMG.  We averaged about 30 miles per shift and hit a 200+ mile day.  Not many boats or sailors can say that they sailed a 200 mile day and we did it – thank God!

After 14 days of not being on my crack berry, phone or computer I finally decided to try to send an email to my family and friends as I was certain they wanted to hear from me.  During my shift, when the boat was floating across the waters, I climbed onto the noisy navigation chair and tried to type.  First it was weird trying to remember where the keys were on the key board, and then I had to adjust my stance to accommodate the shifting of the boat as that shifts the keyboard.  Once I got into a rhythm it flowed and it felt amazing. It was good to share my thoughts and feelings, but probably not so good to be as honest as I was for the first communication.   After that I got productive online as there were a lot of things that I needed to do too: cancel cookie baking day, extend the day care for our home and fish care, alert my work of our delay and make sure some tasks were completed, and reschedule all of our flights.  Once I got that all done I went back to my shift to enjoy the spinnaker sail.  It is part of my personality; I like the check list and today was a good day to √ things off the to-do list!

Its been 2 weeks and we still have fresh fruit on board. Not much left at the moment, a couple oranges and grapefruit. I’ll be gone tomorrow, if not tonight on watch.

Christine got all excited and made breakfast. Old fashioned Flap-Jacks, not the bisquik you are used to, but Flap Jacks. There is a difference, the marketing materials on the Flap Jack box certainly said so. We did forget syrup at the store so, honey and marmalade worked perfectly to top the top notch flap jacks!

The wind is clocking around behind us this morning, so it was light air, 10kt, and almost holding steady @ 120 degrees behind us. We tried to fly the Asymmetrical spinnaker, the A-Kite. It takes about 15 mins to get all hooked up and ready to hoist. Raised it up, and it filled up just fine behind the full main sail. Couple of tweaks and we were floating along, then as expected the big kite scared the wind away, and it dropped to 5kt. So another 20 mins to pack it all backup and wait for more consistent wind.

Spectacular day, really flat ocean, cool breeze, not too humid. Aired out the boat by opening the almost all the hatches, and motor sailed along to keep the 5kt toward the destination and promise of trade winds.

Since an engine was running, 2 loads of laundry were done, water tanks topped off (this time the washing didn’t use all the water, we used the delicate setting, not the full on presoak, cycle). The place looked like a double wide trailer park on laundry day with all the laundry clipped to anything that would get sun to air dry the threads.

Christine also took inventory of all the gear on board, and where it is. She organized a few things and separated some that needs to be separated from the boat as well.

Somewhere today we crossed the 1/2 way point or are about to, I haven’t measured it. We celebrated a good day with a few rum n diets to get inspiration for dinner. Course a vodka sprite for Mrs. Christine.

Z-Tejas has nothing on our fish tacos. Fresh tempura Dorado, Fresh home made salsa complete with cilantro, tomatoes, peppers, onions, the whole works. Yummy, Yummy!

Drug lines, but we were really moving too slow to attract the big fish – or at least that is today’s excuse.

Wind has come around to the stern, and we are cruising along, with hopes of a spinnaker run in the morning. We have heard that the ARC boats just a bit south of us are pulling in 10kt boat speeds so hopefully we’ll get some of that tomorrow too, sort of heading a little south to try to hurry that up.

We are also going to try an SSB call with Ron’s buddy on the west coast tuesday @ 0200z and test out this SSB for voice calls, as we haven’t had much luck finding the ARC frequency.

We are thinking we’ll be at least a week late back to work, we’ll start to work on rescheduling our airfare tomorrow.

Crew is well rested and looking forward to the 2nd half of the journey, and of course getting there.

Course over ground: 235 Speed over ground: 5.2 kn Total miles through water: 266 (got reset) Miles to destination: 1363 kn (as a crow).