04’33.5N 021’36.8W course 316′ speed 4,7kn
Dodging thunder clouds, big showers and absolute down pours, was our motto in the last hours of our night watch last night. A big black cloud came rolling in against the wind.. Behind us, another cloud was rolling in with the wind.. And we were stuck in the middle.. so we chose not to participate in this party. Altering our course to a westerly course, we made our way along the edge of the cloud, that seemed to be nearly stationary. We almost made it all the way to the end of a 12 mile black thunder line before we started feeling some raindrops. So we decided it was time to head back on our planned course.. and as we did, the clouds started to separate and we had some drops fall for about 10 minutes and then it was all over! It worked!

During the day we build a sun tent out of our storm staysail and we kept busy with some rope work, some chart work and some engine room work (which is way to warm really, so it was a small job, followed by a salt water shower with a bucket filled with ocean). To keep ourselves busy further more, they are making pinrail diagrams for themselves to test and improve the knowledge of the lines. There is a lot of sailing going on, during these long crossings, but not a lot of sail handling. Once the sails are up.. they stay there for as long as possible. Getting to know how to set sail, is then a little complicated, because you do not want to loose speed by lowering sails all the time, just for practice. But this drawing will help the muscle memory!

Today we are half way through our time on board, not yet halfway through our miles.. we are short just under 300 miles.. The weather for when we pick up the wind again does look amazing! Close hauled sailing for nearly 2 weeks! We are all looking forward to getting the wind back. The weather report says this could be as soon as tomorrow, late afternoon. I really hope so! But maybe we can squeeze in one more swim stop before we start sailing again! Tonight was our first night where we could see thunder in the distance, but above us we have stars, the big dipper is pointed at Polaris, but he is still hiding in low thin clouds.. Maybe tomorrow!
All is well on board!
jet