Time Out - Time Out - Day 5 Bermuda to Azores

Day 5 in our Atlantic crossing. The last 24h have been calm and peaceful, with 12kt winds we have been sailing @90 degrees with our Code 0 which we put up for the first time on the crossing, this kept us making good ground towards the Azures which slowly but surely is getting closer. We haven’t yet reached the half way mark, but when you look at the nav maps, you can see that we are way out there in the Atlantic. Quite impressive to see absolutely nothing around you for days on end!

Besides another sailing boat, the “Black Sheep” who shadows us about 12 nm north, we see little activity. That includes fish, where we are basically resigning ourselves to little success before getting closer to the Azores. This will be the last day for a few days I suspect, because a big system is creeping up on us from the SW, and we are going to be gaining some speed starting this evening. With winds reach an anticipated 30kt tomorrow, we have spent the last hour preparing the boat, and putting a second Reef into the mainsail. This should see us good as we have already experimented these types of conditions on our previous Atlantic crossing.

We continue to gain ground on the ARC fleet, most of them find themselves in pretty light winds, while we have been lucky to follow a path which has kept us advancing well. I expect to start overtaking some of the slower boats in the next couple of days. Not much else on say, the crew has slipped into a routine of fitness sessions in the mornings, card playing in the afternoons, with everybody napping on and off. Watches are rotating, we do 9-12, 12-2, 2-4, 4-6, 6-9. The 12-2 and 2-4 watches being the less favorite, so we make sure everybody takes turns.

Nautical Miles travelled - 600
Distance to Destination - 1300
Fish caught - ZERO :-(

Jim Saunders - sv TimeOut