Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!!  We certainly have a lot to be thankful for – our beautiful boat arrived to us virtually unharmed, we are sailing across the Atlantic Ocean and we are healthy – tonight we should feast on a small Turkey, stuffing and more – should be great.  We’ve had beautiful weather – clear skies, small white clouds and gorgeous water.  We even started out with great wind, but it soon turned around on us and its strength evaded our sails. During the day, it was cold (even though it is beautiful) and I am wore long johns, long pants, jacket and hat (foul weather gear at night).  All I can say is thank goodness I bought new long john’s (they are not silk, but a new variety of material), new gloves, socks and ear warmers J

We lost sight of land about 11 hours after we left Gran Canarias and realize that heading South might delay our arrival, but it is the best route for now.  One thing we didn’t do, that I heard every crew should do prior to undertaking a long voyage is set “assignments” or “responsibilities”.  This way, no crew member is mistaken as to what is expected of them.  I think that part of the reason we have not done this is because Marvin and Ron have already established some sort of a routine during the first weeks of their passage and the other reason is because it is 3 men and me and I was overruled.  The good news is that there are some assumed roles.  Matt and Ron are the chefs, Marvin helps fix the head and check the engines, I am in charge of the inventory on the boat and cleaning and we all do the sailing thing – I hope this works out.

I tried to send a note on the computer, but it did not work out so well for me – it brings on the sea yuckies!

Since my shift ends at 7p, about a half hour after dinner it makes it really easy to go straight to bed after jotting down my thoughts in my journal.

First night and round of watches over with. Simply awesome evening. A little motor sailing till my shift came up at 1am – 4am, then we could maintain 6kt with just the jib, it was really time to raise the main, just being cautious waited till daylight to make sure none of the lines were twisted.

Lovely dinner cooked up by Capt’n Ron, no kidding, that’s his name. Some chicken boobs (Breasts) and rice, a cold beer and all was good.

As I started this update, the wind shifted, so we went from 10kt with the wind on the port beam to 6kt beating with wind off 40 degrees too the port. Just dropped the dagger boards down, and now back up to 7kt into the 10kt breeze – the speed is the speed through water, not speed over ground which is about a knot slower.

The night was filled with stars and an almost full moon, I think we saw but 2 ships throughout the night, and definitely no oil wells like we are used to in the gulf. Was pretty chilly with the breeze and the jackets and hats were sported by all on watch.

The turkey is thawing in the fridge, to we’ll be celebrating thanksgiving as everyone else, turkey and mashed potatoes, homemade dressing, etc..

All is good here.

As the crow flies, 2577kn miles to go. 194 miles under the keel in the last 24hrs

Originally, shifts were proposed such that each person would work a shift and the next day the shift would change by an hour or two – so that nobody got stuck working bad hours.  But, that did not appeal to me as I need structure and consistency so we decided that everyone would work 2 three hour shifts.  Matt took the worse shift 1a-4a (1p-4p) and I took 4a-7a (4p-7p), then Marvin 7a-11a (7p-11p) and Ron 11a-1 (11p-1a).  This way everyone worked 3 hours and then was off for 9 hours – my idea, this will work better!

I put on the patch yesterday afternoon which is good for 3 days and decided to only take the meclazine (prescription oral medicine) in addition to the patch on bad weather days.  I am not going to get sick!

The boys tossed out their fishing lines with the hopes of catching some dinner.  Matt has a line out and Ron has 2 lines (a bumper or tease line and then another line).

Ron was the chef during the first part of the crossing and Matt is typically the chef on our sailing trips so they were head butting it out to determine who did what – no seriously, they are both so laid back it never mattered.  I think they were just glad they did not have the sole responsibility to feed everyone.

Matt and I are trying to get the feel for the boat again, get used to the 2 new personalities that have lived on our boat for the past 6 weeks, remember not to put the TP in the toilet J and relearn where we stored everything.

Heading south to Cape Verde where we’ve heard the ARC fleet went as well – we are all trying to catch some wind for the crossing.

My first night on shift and I bounded out of bed like a jack rabbit – had enough sleep and was ready to take over for Matt.  I dressed in my warmest clothes, plugged in my I-pod and got the sail update. It was bitter freaking cold. I had long johns, foul weather jumper and jacket, ski socks, ski gloves, ear covers and a hat and I was still chattering at away.   But the sky was amazingly beautiful full of billions of stars.  It was pretty easy sailing, but that was most likely because we didn’t have much wind or boat speed (average 7 knots).