Day 6 or the events of Saturday.

Sailing fast through the night the wind came up so when Christine came up for her shift, we reduced sail, one reef in the main and a shortened jib. Was cruising along, all night long, heading towards an easy 200 mile day.

Off to sleep. Woke up to some big waves and some nice sunny skies.

What do Vera Cruz, Race to the Boarder and now the Atlantic crossing have in common? I’m a frayed knot you are not gonna guess it. So the Topping lift chafed through by the time I woke up. But we were still single reef’d, and doing 10kn in the correct direction. The topping lift had chafed along the rear edge of the main sail, 1/2 dangling behind the boat, and 1/2 still wrapped around the spin halyards and mast.

Now the topping lift holds up the boom to keep it off the solar panels, so when changing the main sail up and down the topping lift is quite necessary.

So we made breakfast @ 10kn – hoping for flatter seas in the afternoon. After breakfast I figured we should remedy the situation and go up there, we weren’t getting bounced around “that” much. Since the topping lift rope was rapped around both spin halyards, I couldn’t risk using both of those for the ride to the top of the mast. Chose to use one of those and a rolling hitch for the safety line on the spreaders/rigging on the way up. Meanwhile Christine is saying NO, you can’t go up there, finally agreed if I wore my PFD.

Fractional spin halyard tied to bosun’s chair. Safty line with rolling hitch on rigging, and PFD safty harness clipped to rigging as well. Expected the motion to be fun, but holy rag doll batman, and I was only going 3/4 of the way up the 70 foot mast. Christine has some video, and not sure we need to go to any more cirque du soliel shows when we can create our own.

I about cried when I got to the topping lift and I was already tired from holding on, that I couldn’t pull it down. There wasy no way I was coming down empty handed. Untangled the rope got thrown out around the jib, and finally was able to pull it down. Probably the longest its ever taken to tie a bowline knot when I tied that to the bosun’s chair. Now back down, feet wrapped around anything and everything to stabilize, did take a 5 minute break sitting on the speaders at least that was comfortable.

Cold beer was had back on deck. An hour to rest, then tied the two pieces together, we’ll wait of some smoother/slower day to re-rig the topping lift as there is plenty of spare line.

That turns out to be one of the better moves as we got 30kn of winds and 10+ foot seas yesterday evening, so being able to add the 2nd reef became necessary.

We saw the thunderstorm coming so we reduced to the 3rd reef, but somewhere the lazy jacks got untied to sailbag didn’t catch the entire main, tired from the earlier activities and not nearly tall enough to reach high enough the bag is there and also waiting on calmer weather to really secure. When we put in the 3rd reef, the main halyard was thumping the mast, so we just dropped it in favor of slow motoring to the storm.

Probably a good thing too. 45k of wind came bustling through with rain to accompany the 12foot seas, then back to 30kn of wind.

We have been in a thunderstorm so this update is a few hours late, but we are still trucking due west across. We had a spectacular lightning show that we motored right through, turning off all electronics and storing some in the oven in case the strike was closer than we wanted it to be.

Right now, making water, one engine running, partial jib out – biding time as the weather is supposed to go our way within 30hrs.

Crew is well rested with the slowing down and motoring through the high seas. Christine is doing well too, in this freakishly huge waves, over one and into the next.

Everyone is doing well, just had some yummy omelets with left over pork chops from last nights sammiches, too much wave action for a big dinner last night. Some typing, couple reading and one on watch, chugging along!

Course over ground: 273 Speed over ground: 4.9kn Total miles through water: 858 Miles to destination: 2168 kn if we were a bird.

We are all getting into a routine where we know our shifts, roles and places.   My body is actually getting used to the schedule, the strange sleep hours, the rocking of the boat and the light eating.  The food is great, but the portions are “normal” size rather than the standard “American” giant portions.   Maybe we will lose weight J Matt thinks the weather is getting warmer, but I am still wearing the same layers and clothes day and night.  The good news is that you don’t go through a variety of clothes or a large assortment of clothes as you just re-wear the same thing over and over again as it just doesn’t matter.  In fact I am sleep in the same clothes that I am wear during the day and to my surprise I have no issues with it at all.

During the early evening our 10 year old topping lift frayed through. Thank goodness the main had a single reef so the boom did not topple on top of our cockpit cover which housed our solar panels.  Unfortunately it meant that someone was going to have to go up the mast to get the end of the topping lift to re-tie it and Mother Nature decided to send us some big winds, waves and boat speed.  Of course it had to be Matt to go up.  Matt grabbed the boson chair and had determined to make a running hitch, but I insisted he wear his pfd and latch it on the line as well – three times the protection.  It was the most horrifying thing to see my sweet husband up 60’ from the deck in 20 knots of wind, 10 knots of boat speed and 12’ seas – what was I thinking?  He bounced around like a rag doll – it was awful.  There were several times when he was only hanging from his safety lines and his body was bouncing around the lines and off the mast as if it were made of rubber.  The good news is was able to repair the line and make it down without any serious injuries.  My prayers were answered.  After that was fixed and most of us were in bed, we had a massive storm that brought lots of lightening during Matt’s shift.  He quickly turned off all of our equipment and placed some items in the oven.  We had over 45 knots of wind, bare poles, rain, thunder and lightening – pretty darn scary.  For my shift it was just rain, very little thunder and no lightening but it was still a long shift keeping me on pins and needles

So, THAT’S what that button is for!

I realized that my days are off, with regards to the subject of these posts, I’m writing about what happened n day 4 of the crossing but writing about it on day 5, so be it, off by one – typical programmers mistake, I’ll run with it.

Woke up this morning to a boat load of frenzied activities. Seemed something was going as planned, hauled my but up to listen come up to speed, as Christine’s translation on what was wrong with the charging of the brand new batteries we had installed was. As I said yesterday the little generator that could, wasn’t and was going to try and sort it out in the day light. Well, Marvin had beat me to it, because the starboard engine wasn’t charging the batteries fast enough. He had changed engines to use the port engine to charge the batteries and then tried the little honda and it overloaded. The 220volt shore power battery charger wasn’t charging! So by all accounts we were down to 1 charging source, the port engine. Solar doesn’t work at night. Checking the shore power, there were no light on it, and the switch was off. Last night when I ran the starboard engine, it put some 60amp hours back, would have thought that the 115amp alternator would do better than that but was still charging none the less. No lights on the charger, not a problem, no incoming power. Start the honda, ahh lights on the charger – all good there. Remembering that there was a green light on an un-marked switch that lights up when running shore power/honda generator – oh that button, yeah thats the hot water heaters, they draw much more than the generator can produce. While putting the “stuff” back in to the compartment with the charger, I accidentally hit the off button so charging ceased for about 5 mins, but that was an easy fix. Nothing was wrong, except a switch for water heaters was on, it is now off.

Some sammiches for lunch, with some really yummy cheddar cheese. Made a tortilla soup with the leftover turkey, came out okay but boiling in the pressure cooker seemed to take away alot of flavor – all tasted good, just needed some pepper or more cilantro.

We saw our first sailboat out here today, it was on the horizon. We were on a port tack, and they must have been on starboard tack, as they showed up on our starboard but were way behind our stern later in the day. Probably 6+ miles away. Ron has also spotted a mast head light that he is watching right now.

Weather continues to be a mystery. Every forecast we see or get, says the wind should be coming from someplace we could sail, but its coming from where we want to go. For example, right now the most recent forecast says it should be coming from 188 @ 13.2kn, but what we see is 220 @ 8kn, so I guess that’s a lot closer then the 180 degree difference earlier today. Hmmm, maybe we’ll get to trust these forecasts sooner than later.

Tonight after dinner the wind and seas had died down so much we decided to motor sail a bit, and head closer to the due west heading. So I started the engine oil/transmission check on the port engine and discovered the heating system repair that was done in turkey was leaking sea water into the engine compartment – no biggie, just a drip here and there. Tried to fix it, they had tighted a hose clamp where there was nothing to tighten it to, just splitting the aluminum hose. Cut a piece off and reattached it slowed the drip significantly, we’ll just keep an eye on it, as we aren’t using the heaters anyway.

It is definitely warming up, on tonight’s watch I will still have a jacket on, but gone are the multiple layers under the jacket. Cool but doesn’t bite through ya.

All it good, played “I’m on a boat” today – smiles on everyone’s faces even with the profanity in the “Lonely Island” version of that song, I love it. I replaced the outdoor speakers with cheapies but have been awesome to have on this trip. The old ones cones were shot, so they made no sound. The favorite thing about those, they were nice and silicone’d in to the boat to prevent leaks, except when the cone acted like a funnel.

Just turned off the noise makers (engine) and stared sailing in 13kn of wind, heading 273 @ 7kn – Lemke you would be proud, not always a beam reach! Using lots of dagger board to get 40degrees off the wind.

Course over ground: 254 Speed over ground: 6.3kn Total miles through water: 610 Miles to destination: 2353 kn if we were a bird.