We are officially ½ way across the Atlantic ocean today, so I made Flap jacks to celebrate.  As I made Mickey Mouse pancakes for the boys they read the history of a flap jack which was an interesting story, really!  Today was beautiful, warm and fairly calm. It was a great day to be on the water, but a bad day for sailing with a goal toward your destination.  However, this made it a perfect day to get a big chunk of the inventory done. I started on the starboard side as I can clean it out and put “un-essential” items in one place (for quick unloading once at St Lucia).  I attacked all starboard storage areas including the cabinets, floor board storage, head and under the bed storage – it was a huge undertaking, but a good work day.  I removed everything from the area, determined if usefulness, sorted it.  If it made the “keep” pile, it was cleaned. Once everything was removed, I cleaned the storage area and returned the clean, keep items and inventoried the area.   After working on the starboard side, I started working on the galley (not the salon seating storage areas as that is its own task).  It was hard to really get through the galley area when there is so much food. I don’t want to discard anything including the expired food for fear that we might need to eat it – guess I will need to do that when we get ashore.  I did inventory the plate ware, glass ware, utensils, pots, pans, baking items, etc…when we get ashore I will have to take everything out, sort, clean, inventory and place in storage areas that make more sense to us.

In addition to all of my cleaning and inventory work, I managed to get 2 more loads of laundry done so we all have clean clothes.  This time we only used ¼ tank for 2 loads, much better on the delicate cycle.  I know it sounds like a no brainer, but having the low suds laundry detergent is great – but it just doesn’t smell as nice as my Tide Lavender from home.   We toasted our ½ way mark with rum, vodka and gin (not mixed together silly, the boys had rum and diet; I had vodka sprite and Marvin and gin).  I thought the vodka would help me sleep but unfortunately it eluded me most of the night.  Between the pounding of the boat, the light from the navigation station and the squeaking of the navigation chair I got about 3 hours of sleep – made for a tough shift.  We were heading in the wrong direction with full sails up and 23 knots of wind.  So, I woke Matt up to help me jibe the boat.  We did and lost all boat speed so we tacked back but took a different angle.  He headed back to bed so I could finish my shift. By the time my replacement came up, an hour late because he overslept, I crashed and slept hard.

Night watches on the gulf of Mexico have you watching out for shrimp boats, work boats heading to the rigs, and of course the rigs themselves. This trip, its been about enjoying the stars, looking for the occasional commercial or sailboat out on the horizon or just keeping the boat heading the correct direction and adjusting the sails. Mostly its poking Auto, when there is a wind shift.

Awesome day, woke up a little upset about the miles under the keel since the engines were turned off and late raising of the full sail. After that we have been kicking it all day motor sailing, with one engine at 1400 rpm, just to push us over the wave when the wind dies.

Ham and cheese omelets for breakfast, and just chilled out most of the day as we sailed onward.

After lunch snack quesidilla, motivation got the better of us. Christine had been wanting to do a load of laundry, and with a beautiful sunny day. We tried the washing machine. I worked but sucked out fresh water tank on the starboard side dry as a bone. Doh! Note to self, use the ‘short’ cycle when making your own water, took the better part of the day to replenish the water supply with the watermaker. But all back in business now.

We have been dragging fishing lines behind the boat for thousands of miles with only one Bonita to show for it. That all changed today. First Ron hooked a sweet Dorado (Mahi Mahi) right after I had changed from a small lure to a large one, Doh! I watched him filet up that puppy, now in the freezer. A while later, I hooked another Dorado, a bit bigger I might add, and I cleaned and made steaks from this guy. Guess what we had for dinner. Awesome Mahi Mahi over rice and green beans.

Captain Ron cooked up the delicious meal while I put the Lazy Jacks back together. Christine even really enjoyed the fresh MahiMahi going back for seconds.

I’m starting to think that if Jack wasn’t so lazy Matt wouldn’t have to work to fix them. They really need to be re-done right, instead of scraps of line that are there now.

Another beautiful night tonight, no clouds, lots of stars, almost warm enough to leave the jacket inside. The winds are shifting north, so we are not on the nose. Right now our course has a 30 degree fluctuation between 250 and 280, every so often, with 275 being the direction to the destination. Winds are light at 8-10kt, but with the iron genny (engine) filling in, we are still getting 6kt to the destination. Minimal waves so the sleeping is good.

Crew is still doing well, ready to make better time. Optimistic that the forecast holds and we can fly a spinnaker soon, and at least are doing better than 30 miles we got a few days ago. Out best guess is that we’ll be a week later than planned but that’s still an early guess, we’ll be trying to come up with a plan in a couple of days as what to do about the airfare and tickets during busy season.

Course over ground: 256 Speed over ground: 5.3kn Total miles through water: ugh, reset again,now says 102 Miles to destination: 1508 kn if we were a bird.

I can’t tell you how irritating it is to wake up to 1-2 knots of boat speed.  This is not the first time it has happened and it is more aggravating than you can imagine.  It appears that not all of our crew members are on the same page as to the goal of this trip – deliver the boat as safely and quickly as possible.  Matt has had to have a chat with the crew to ensure that we stay on course hit the best VMG as possible and keep the boat speed up as much as the boat can safely handle without beating up the crew.  It is hard to believe that we have been at sea for 12 days and are ½ way through our fuel and food and are only ½ way across the Atlantic.

We ran the water maker to fill up our water tanks again today (I love the water maker).  However, the water from the water maker is supposed to taste like regular water, but it tastes salty which means the water maker was not de-pickled properly during the first part of the crossing and/or something is wrong with one of the filers – Matt will have to fix it when we get to St Lucia – for now we will have to deal with salty water L.

I was able to convince the boys that we need to run the washer machine as we had worn and re-worn the same clothes for almost 2 weeks.  Of course I did not want to listen to the directions given to me and I ran the machine on “normal” load which sucked all the water out of one of the tanks – lesson learned.  We will re-fill the tanks and try another load tomorrow.  Even though this is a washer/dryer we decided not to use the dryer to preserve the batteries.  So, we decorated the boat with our clean laundry and managed to pull off the ‘white trash” look pretty well.

Ron cooked a wonderful dinner using part of the fish that they caught – I loved it.  Yes, you read that right, little miss non-fish eating girl loved the fresh fish dinner.

We ended up running one engine and averaged 100 miles today (our goal is 150 per day).