After a tough day yesterday, we had a rough night last night with huge seas creating lots of pounding, bouncing and noise.  I know this boat is safe and hardy, but it is hard to believe there will not be any problems with the hulls of the boat.  Matt assures me that the boat is fine and that the noise is a lot worse than anything else that could happen.  I was squeezing his hand every time the boat pounded the wave and he said “it will be a long night if you do that with every wave”.  Even though we have strong winds it is not coming from the direction we want – really bad wind angle.    All day we had 22-25 knots of wind, huge rollers and a boat speed of 3-4 knots.  We averaged about 25 miles over the last 24 hours – eek gads we will never make it to our destination!  We did manage to spot 2 shipping containers – yeah “proof of life” J

A very exciting day. We woke up with a muggy pacific northwest feel. Cloudy and thick as pea soup, but there was some wind so off go the engines and we are sailing for real again, in 14kt of wind, doing a nice respectful 9-10kt to weather, cruising right along with full sails up.

Good ole breakfast tacos with some Turkish mystery meat, supposed to be beef but cooks more like Chorizo. Came out yummy tho, needed a good breakfast for today.

Seems that Christine has committed one of the cardinal rules of sailing and wished/prayed for more wind, tho she said she specified from the stern. Well we got the wind alright. 14kt became 20, so we put a the first reef in the main the ‘green’ reefing line, and still busting some good distance.

A few hours into the run, my fishing line goes off, off like Moby Dick had swallowed that small lure, ripping almost 600 yrds of line off the reel. So we slowed the boat by coming into the wind, and still ripping off line, I started to haul it in. That fish was 4000 lbs if it was 15 feet long, but of course it spit the hook out as soon as we slowed down, bummer!

So we started to fall off, to get back on course. A loud BANG! (thinking to self, what the hell?) First thought topping lift? Noticed the boom on the solar panels, quickly grabbed the second reefing line to raise the boom from bouncing on the solar panels, then noticed the topping lift was fine, so used that instead and relased the second reef. Turns out the ‘green’ reefing line where it ties to the boom chafed through while sitting in irons. A quick look and the line was still in boom, but not around the pulleys at end, so some acrobatic work, 60mins of it and the green reefing line is back where it goes.

Insult to injury, the lazy sheets the sailbag that was just fixed a few days ago tried to contain the reefed sail popped again so there is another trip up the mast at some point to re-secure the lazy jacks. Have a temporary fix in place so that we can still use the lazy jacks.

Penne Pasta Primavera with chicken for dinner after a day of putting lots of miles under our keels.

The weather tonight is impossible, I couldn’t even type on the keyboard we were getting bounced around so much. Hardly any sleep will be had by anyone. Finally on Christine’s shift, we hit 40kn of wind, so dropped what very little sail we had up, and turned on the engines to go real slow, up and over and round the waves.

Totally soaking wet from rain, sea water spashes, high humidity, everyone got at lesat a little sleep.

Everyone doing well, my bruises from the trip up the mast are starting to heal, but look hideous.

At this rate we’ll definitely miss our flights, we have 1700 something miles to go and beating to weather in these seas is rough going.

Course over ground: 253 Speed over ground: 4.6kn Total miles through water: 636 (was 1100 so 1100+636-450 would be the right number = 1286 Miles to destination: 1757 kn if we were a bird.

I could not believe my eyes this morning – there was another boat way far off on the horizon!  It is always exciting to see another boat (as it is for everyone else) because it is proof that there is another form of life out on this big, blue water road.  It is very easy to let the “smallness” overwhelm you as there is so much water in every direction and no boats, no planes, no cell phones and very little communication.  It is really hard to describe this feeling other than “smallness” and seeing another boat can break that spell.

We got some wind today, through up the main with the first reef and were ticking off the miles toward St Lucia when BOOM – the reefing line broke (too much load on her).  Once the reefing line broke, the sail filled and popped the lazy jacks, dropping the boom on the cockpit cover (barely missing our solar panels) and blanketing the starboard side of the boat with the main. It was a frightening sound, experience, and sight.  It took us over 1 ½ hours to re-rig the sail, sail bag and lines and somewhere in the middle of all this process we managed to get the fishing lines wrapped around our props and a printer leaked toner all over the bottom of the closet and some of my clothes – tough day.