850 miles to go. That's further than we have ever sailed before, prior to this crossing, and yet it now seems like not too far at all. If the weather cooperates we should be able to do that in 6 more days.
We were playing around on the map today. Did you know that it would have been a shorter distance to sail to Halifax from the Canaries than to sail to St. Lucia? It would be a terrible sailing route, through some really nasty storms in the north
Atlantic but less miles. Way way further to sail to south Africa though. Our stupid northern projection maps don't show that properly.
The weather where we are sailing has been pretty good. The waves and wind are down from what we had previously. That means we aren't hitting 165 miles in a day any more but it is a bit more gentle of a sail. The boat and water noises and movement
still seem like a ton when you lie down to go to sleep though. I have actually started sleeping on the couch in the saloon at night as it is the most central part of the boat so the least noise and movement. It also means Jen and I don't wake each other, me
when I end my watch at midnight and her when she starts at 3am.
We don't do all that much in a day really but simple things are much more challenging when your world is getting tossed around. Making breakfast and doing the dishes turn in to much bigger jobs than they are when you are not under way. Today
I made breakfast, did the dishes, crushed the cans in our recycling bin, adjusted our heading a tiny bit, played a card game, did 1000 steps on my little stair master and took a lie down. Oh, and I ate my first chocolate bar of the trip (I am not such a sugar
person so have mostly traded my chocolate bars for other people's protein bars). In two hours we have our 6pm meeting then we eat dinner. Then clean up then I do my watch from 9pm to midnight. I will Reef in our sails when I start that but likely that's it
for sail handling. And that's the day. In some ways it is nice to have things be so simple. It's a very in the moment, mindful kind of living. Immediate and distinct tasks.
Yesterday we managed to get the rudder back on our hydro vane (Darcy did the lions share of that job). So we are now back to Eowynn (our hydro vein is named Eowynn) steering the ship. If someone says that no man can steer better than them, we
are ready with "but I am no man, you look upon a hydro vane".
And that's all. Oh look, I did one more thing today, wrote a blog entry.