Albatross - Dec 5 - 16th Day at Sea

All is well. We are 914 miles from St Lucia, and Las Palmas is 1,782 miles behind us.

We are now sailing in the "trade winds" (Alisios, as they are known in Spanish). It's strange to think that Chicago got its first snow today, when for us here it gets hotter and hotter every day.

We have been seeing other boats nearly every day. Today we crossed two Cargo ships. The first one, at 4:00 am, was heading directly towards us, we called him on the radio and requested a "starboard to starboard" crossing, which he was happy to oblige. We also sailed along two other sail boats for a few hours, one aptly named Santa Maria. They were going to Barbados and are no longer in sight.

Yesterday evening we were motor-sailing with winds from aft of 7-8 knots. At 1:00 am the wind increased to 9-12 knots and shifted to our beam. We switched off the engine and for the last 20 hours have been sailing. Winds are a bit light, 9-11 knots, coming from 110°-120° and our heading is 277°, but we are making good progress moving at an average VMG of 5-6 knots. As Captain Alex Guzman always says, speed is vanity, VMG is sanity!

Yesterday night we got our daily allowance of flying fish: two overnight on deck, and this afternoon had three small white birds, with a long white tail, flying over us for hours. They made a sound similar to a conure.

Today we caught our forth Mahi-Mahi. Some astute readers of this blog have noticed that we did catch four Mahis but only ate three. Where did the other one go? It's time to confess, after James and Kevin caught our second one, they cleaned it, filleted it, and put it in the fridge. Or so I though, when I threw away a bucket with dirty water, which unfortunately had the Maui filets on it. That's a unique "catch and release" method! That day we had to eat chicken. But not today. Today we had the Mahi with mango chutney (prepared from scratch by Lolo), and spaghetti with green pees. It was delicious.

With light winds we took the opportunity to spend time on our books. I am reading "1492: The Year The World Began", by Felipe Fernandez-Arnesto. James is reading "Every Time I Find the Meaning of Life They Change It", by Daniel Klein. Kevin is reading "Blink", Chuck is now addicted to Hemingway and is now on his third book (note to Gib, you got your stocking stuffer here). Lolo is reading her celestial Navigation and Captain license books. And Billy is reading "The Adventures of Chas from Tas", a book that mentions his father, who was a well known professional sailor.