Day 9

At the helm for my 3-6am shift again. Lucky for me, I was off the previous night after the 6-9pm shift, where I struggled to keep my eyes open. We had been sailing well the previous day, BUT, not towards our goal.
We tacked and were still running parallel to the weather line we needed to cross by Tuesday Sunset. I argued hard that we needed to drop sails, point into the wind, and drop down a few degrees of longitude (south). Although the guys we have as crew are very knowledgeable, they also hesitate to assert there opinions so Brian and I tend to make the tactical decisions….and we usually have differing opinions. For 9 hours we motored (no sails) into the wind and although only making 3-4knm/hr we make southerly progress. The sea was churning and it was an unpleasant night. I did my shift from 6-9 and then tried to sleep. Brian was supposed to be on at 3am but was awakes at 1am as the autopilot stopped working and couldn’t handle motoring into the wind and waves. For awhile they hand steered, and then put up the storm sail and fell off a few degrees to where it was agreeable for the auto pilot to work.
Phew…. I didn’t lose my writing. Suddenly the sails started to quiver and I realized the wind shifted. I popped on the radar and saw I was surrounded by squalls. I increased engine speed (as we are motor sailing … with three sails), and spent the last 40minutes weaving through them. We are close hauled, heading due south (178 degrees) and the squalls are moving west to east, and sucking all the wind out of the air.
It is 5:10am and fully light out now… which made it easier to dodge the squalls as I could see them as the sun rose. We are still on EST but it is dark by 4:20pm and we are eating before 5pm. Soon we will need to shift our clocks to Antigua (Atlantic) time.
Back to sipping coffee that Brian made for me at the end of my shift. Since we have been running the engine so much, and the water temperatures are warm, the freezers are struggling. We may need to cook up food and refrigerate it.
From now (Wednesday) to Sunday there isn’t going to be much wind after the Cold Front (mainly 10-12 foot waves) passes. This means either motoring and hoping we have enough fuel (with the port gauge gone it’s hard to assess… although there was 7/8 when it conked). I am
No opposed to having a few lull days (or at least 24hrs of slowly drifting South in order to preserve freezer food and fuel. Brian is worried that he made the wrong decision by not stopping in Bermuda. I think we’ll be fine.
The only other excitement yesterday was a fish on the reel that got off as we couldn’t slow down in time. When Starlink was on, I got to chat via text with Andrew and that was so nice! I got the cutest video from my nephew as well ✨.
My book is now published on Amazon (https://a.co/d/c2mfna0), but I want to figure out how to get a hard copy before I start to advertise it. Hopefully this helps FTHS and we can find sponsors who will purchase the books for inmates. Thrilled to have this project finally concluded!!Read more