Day Two Goes Out Like a Lion
11 May 2012 | 170 Miles North of Puerto Rico
Jeff
Last night at about 2300 I was sleeping when Pam called me with urgency that she needed my help. She had spotted a squall bearing down on us and wanted to reduce sail. So when I got out of my eyes I went on deck to find that she was right so we rolled up the jib to face the squall with just the main sail up. The wind came before the rain, always a good sign because they don't tend to last as long, and it blew as high as 35 knots. In about ten minutes it was all over and Monty, the windvane, handled all the steering while Pam and I just went a long for the ride. After the rain and wind passed we decided to jibe over to port because continuing on our current northerly course looked like it would bring us into more squalls as we could see lightning to our north. Upon jibing we reset the jib and continued our journey now in a more westerly direction. We can't sail directly for where we want to go because the wind is so light. To sail dead down wind in these light, 10 to 12 knot winds, tends to be very uncomfortable. So we are tacking down wind this way we create some of our own apparent wind which steadies the boat making the ride more comfortable. The down side is that we can't go directly for our destination. Unless we get a wind shift from its current ESE direction. All in all day two wasn't too bad our 24 hour run was 144 nautical miles. Now into day three we have just jibed back to the NW as the wind shifted more easterly making starboard the favorable jibe. Now we are running the engine to charge the batteries while I do this report, then we will eat dinner, beef stroganoff tonight, and then it will be on to another adventurous night watch. Stay tuned to see what happens next.