Hummingbird continues to the South West and fickle winds are at play. We had the Spinnaker up for a little while, but winds have been a bit fluky and the work wasn't worth the speed. Handling a symmetrical spinnaker on a large pole takes a lot of team-work and the Skipper was directing the crew like a conductor with an orchestra (albeit a rather cacophonic one as first timers on this boat).
The weather has been great and blue skies with nice big blue slow rolling waves makes us a bit sleepy as we get into the rhythm of the watch system. The 11pm to 3pm watch seems to be the least favourite at the moment and everyone is a little quiet during this time. However, the opportunity for star gazing is at it's peak and some of us are using the apps on our phones to identify various stars and planets. If we look really closely, we can see Uranus!
It has also been interesting to follow the marine traffic around us and we have been contacted a couple of times during the night by boats with a potentially intersecting path. Although the boats appear quite far away when we see their lights, they can be as close as one mile away, and as we are both under sail, it is better to check the intended course of each other to avoid any potential of collision. A very different approach to coastal sailing or club racing when we just duck behind each other.
After a nice cruising evening of sailing an average of 7.5kts on a course of 235 degrees the wind died early morning and continuing to sail under main sail and Yankee 1 headsail wasn't taking us where we wanted to go. So, as we are cruising and not racing, we can fire up the old iron sail (i.e. engine) and continue to make way at about 6.5kts. This is also a good time to run our water maker and charge our batteries, keeping both boat systems and crew healthy.
Till Tomorrow, Bill Kidd