Sailing upwind is not nearly as fun as sailing downwind. We both had trouble sleeping between the sound of the waves slapping the hulls and the way the boat shudders when it slams into a trough. However, compared to the previous night’s lightning show, it was not bad. Whenever conditions get rough, Ray always says, “This is still better than sitting in a cubicle!”. I couldn’t agree more. We sailed the majority of the night using our main and jib. There were periods where we were only going 4kn and stretches where we were making over 6kn. The sea state calmed down after the sun rose, leaving us with fairly comfortable conditions for the rest of the day. We both took hot showers.
I did another produce inspection, blanching some green beans and dicing up some soft bell peppers to throw in the freezer before they spoiled. If you’ve been waiting on my provisioning blog post, I’ve decided to wait until we arrive in French Polynesia to post it! That way, I can include some info about what lasted the longest/if I wish I would’ve done anything differently. So far, I wish I had bought more pineapples; the ones in Panama are delicious! We’ve already eaten two this week!
We started the engine for a bit after lunch but were able to turn it off shortly after. The wind has been such a tease! The sun finally began to peek through the clouds later in the afternoon, but after multiple days of mostly overcast skies, it wasn’t enough to give our batteries the charge they needed. So, Ray turned on the generator. We continued sailing with our main and jib in 14kn of apparent wind, SOG 6.5-7kn. It had shaped up to be a beautiful afternoon!
Despite the sunshine, the cool breeze had me reaching for my jacket at the helm. Ray was crouched down on our port side, stitching the cover on our continuous furling line. It wasn’t technically busted, but the cover was loose and getting bunched up when in use, so these stitches should prevent it from separating from the core, getting stuck, and causing future problems.
We ate dinner together in the cockpit and discussed our shift times for the evening (we’re still trying to optimize our overnights). Here is my view as I’m posting this: 😍
See ya tomorrow!
I would have to agree- much better than sitting in a cubicle!! ❤️
I’ll take the helm over an office any day! 😉
Nice!
☺️
Another great update, thank you.
Thank you!
Great update! Fair winds!! Cheers!!
Thank you! 🙂
Hi – wish that was my view. any guess on how many days left?
Probably around 26 days total!
Looks beautiful sounds much better than a cubical. I hope your journey is all this beautiful. Be safe always
Thank you! ❤️
Sending you guys lots of good wind vibes! I’m interested in hearing how the experiments go with different night watch schedules. We’ve settled into 4 hours each here, but the longest we have done that in one passage is for 9 nights. If we do the pacific crossing with the just the two of us like you guys are, we might want to explore different schedules, too.
We did 5hrs for our 9 day sail from SXM to Panama and it worked well for us. Since this is such a long passage though we’ve been playing around with the start times of our night shifts trying to find a sweet spot where we both feel like we get one main rest (in the dark) and one nap while the sun is up. Will report back when we settle into something!