John Log 3 – Eating amazingly well

Well, we’re still going to end up taking probably more like 18 to 20 days for this passage rather than the originally estimated 14, but at least the last three days have seen us making good progress. We’ve finally managed some beam and broad reach sailing in somewhat lighter winds with the ‘gennaker’ (a combo genoa/spinnaker sail). We’ve managed some stretches above 7 knots and have been averaging a solid 6. As a big bonus, the seas have been calmer on these points of sail, the boat isn’t heeled over as much, so it much more comfortable sailing.

I’ve managed to do a bit of work and we’ve played a few games.

We’re eating amazingly well on this trip so far. My sister in law, Tni, is in charge of the cooking for the most part and she’s done a great job. In addition to preparing some excellent meals like Pad Thai and a roasted butternut squash pasta dish that was delicious, she doesn’t have any seasickness symptoms at all. So, when the rest of us have occasionally not been feeling too hot, she’s still been able to do the meals. I’m in charge of two meals and made a garlic and red pepper fettucine dish for my first one. Today I’m going to make irish soda bread this morning to go with a fish stew I’m going to make this evening.

I spotted a sea turtle yesterday, the first one we’ve seen. He was a dark green color, but I didn’t get too good a look at him as we cruised by at 6 or 7 knots. Jeff had the good fortune to see a pod of dolphins swim by the boat during his watch the night before last. A full moon was out, so he had good visibility.

This morning everyone is asleep as I man the last watch of the night, the 8:00am to 10:00am watch. Sky’s are cloudy and we’re sailing along under full genoa and main sails at about 5 knots, heading about 50 degrees towards true north (towards the northeast). We’re at 35 deg, 2 min N Lat and 49 deg, 24 min W Long.

We’re heading a bit north of our desired course to try and prepare for an unfavorable change in winds forecast to hit us late tomorrow. We’ve been downloading weather data over the single side band radio, and it shows us running into this wind shift. We listened to Herb’s daily weather broadcast yesterday evening and he recommended the northerly heading for boats in our area. We’ll see throughout the day today how things develop.

After writing this log entry, I’m going to do few other things on the computer, then pull out the gennaker and try to find a small tear in it we noticed when we took it down yesterday. We might need to do some field repairs on it.

Ok, I guess that’s it for now.