It's the early morning of day 12. Yesterday started quite badly but ended up really well.
At 3am, Jo, who was on watch, noticed that one of the bolts attaching our Hyrdo Vane had snapped. This put the whole hydro vane at risk of ripping off the back of the boat. She quickly alerted the other adults and we worked efficiently to take
the wind vane and the rudder off which removed all of the pressure on the system. Luckily we were able to just switch over to the electric auto pilot.
In the morning we noticed that our steering felt very stiff and we worried that our auto pilot wouldn't be able to handle it. We hand steered while simultaneously working to grease up the steering quadrant everywhere that we could think of.
We briefly feared that we would have no self steering system and still almost 1400 miles to go.
In the daylight we were able to get a new bolt installed on the hydro vane. We couldn't get the rudder back on in the big conditions but the system is ready to deploy again as soon as the wind and waves calm down enough to allow us to do that.
Meanwhile the grease worked and the steering is proper again and the electric auto pilot has been steering us for more than 24 hours now.
Having officially passed the half way point on miles, our 6pm song of the day was an obvious choice "Living on a Prayer." Everyone belted out the lyrics at full volume ("oh, we're half way there...) It was a moment of pure joy. We then thought
we would give a call out on the radio just to see if any other ARC boats could hear us and one did. They said they hadn't seen or heard from anyone in days. We briefly saw a light way off in the distance last night which I think was actually yet another boat.
So, nobody really close but we do have multiple boats in the vicinity.
For dinner we had a really nice roast that we had bought that was already seasoned and cooked and then vacuum sealed. We also had sparkling lemonade and carrots and roast potatoes and some chocolate that I bought in Italy specially to be eaten
mid Atlantic.
Through the night we massively reefed down the sails but still hurtled along at significant speed. It feels even faster when you are lying in bed trying to get some sleep. It's pretty nuts how much the boat is moving around.
As of 7AM Snowmane Time (we change time zones whenever our 6pm meeting isn't lined up so as to be just prior to sunset, we have now done that twice) we had 1216 miles to go! Prior to this year that would seem like an absolutely ludicrous distance
to go. Now it seems like, wow, we are getting there.