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It's 19:00 hours Friday night (That's 7:00 p.m. for you land lubbers). Dinner tonight was strip steaks, mashed potatoes, and brussel sprouts served to a collection of sailor songs as we sang and ate together and shared our daily bottle of wine. Dishes done we now settle into resting mode in preparation for the night. Our 3 hour night watches start at at 21:00 hours. we all try to get in some rest and maybe a short sleep. God damn, it's been a good day at sea. After our last night of confused winds and more confused navigators the day broke warm and the winds calmed. I crawled out of my bed to find Capt Dana cat napping at the helm, fixed us some coffee and joined him at the elevated perch. We talked about the night, laughed at the convoluted course us minnows had sailed, observing how the weather was changing with the arrival of the sun. We pondered privately the conditions, how the sails had been set for the night, and what we'd do with what the new day was presenting. His empty metal coffee cup tinged down next to the instruments and Dana looked at me- "You thinking what I'm thinking"? His look gave the easy answer. I just smiled and nodded back.. "The wind 's pretty light, let's pull down the other sails first so we don't have the wind shadow to deal with". We furled the jib from the helm then went forward to the mast and dropped the mainsail. Dana already had the huge spinnaker sail pulled out of it's locker and snaked out on the trampoline looking like a Dune sandworm in the gray sleeve from which it launchedwhen I came down from securing things. The worms tail shot up into the air to the top of the mast then spit out the glorious blue and white balloon sail that immediately swelled out from the bow of the boat. Yermo soon emerged from his rest. Curiosity about the commotion, the engine turning off, and the clatter of the winches ratcheting was more than he could ignore. We flew the big sail most of the day. light and variable winds meant sometimes we were faster, sometimes slower than motor sailing..We don't have enough fuel to make it to St. Martin so we have to sail a good bit regardless. We all just like that big gorgeous powerful sail. Yermo spotted a whale, I saw another. We caught a small mahi-mahi, let it go. For the first time we put on shorts and T-shirts and looked for shady spots to get out of the sun.. The wind just faded away around 15:30. The gray worm swallowed the sail, came down to the deck, and was nudged back into it's locker. The mainsail went back up to carry us into the night. I don't know which watch I'm doing tonight, it doesn't matter. The sky is clearing and there are will be a star show tonight. Whichever slot I end up with, one end of the watch will touch Yermo 's and we look forward to sharing the night sky together again. It's magic.
Wayne- It's warm this morning! I've finally allowed myself to get a decent stretch of uninterrupted sleep, I've been neglecting my rest until it caught up to me last night. That fatigue was leading to errors and this morning I am nursing a rope burn on my right hand sustained last night when Yermo and I were rerigging the sail plan to go back to motor sailing again. I'm sure Yermo has documented our travails. Capt. Dana rerigged again early this morning to accommodate the light and still variable breeze when there's any at all.We are now motor sailing to our waypoint south of Bermuda at a little over 5kn, heading 169m/autohelm steering.
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