Water Temp 78

Well, we're now about one day's sail from harbor. It's been a long trip, but it's gone well and there have been no threats to safety. We've eaten well and not gotten on anybody else's nerves (I think). All in all, we're pleased with our accomplishments to date.

The sailing over the last 24 hours has been variable. The winds have decreased and increased, but have certainly been generally better than they were at the start of the event. We're headed more or less straight down-wind, with the spinnaker up much of the time. That's an annoying point of sail because the boat isn't especially fast there and it tends to wallow a bit (nothing as bad as a monohull, however) in the swell. Nevertheless, it does point us directly where we wish to go, which is generally
more desirable (at this point) than aiming higher and having to sail farther (but faster).

We passed a big ship yesterday afternoon. It was a tanker of over 1000 feet steaming for a placed somewhere ESE of here called "Bonny". We presume that's an oil rig but don't know exactly where. It was due to arrive a few days before Christmas, however, so presumably it's far away, maybe off the coast of Nigeria. We can glean all this information from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) it "squawks". That's picked up by our scanner and gives us food for thought. Also, and more importantly,
it gives us information like it's speed, distance, closest point of approach and time to such point. This takes some of the guesswork out of attempting to avoid the big ships. It was quite light in the water. It passed us by about three miles away on the starboard side.

The freezer was defrosted today, a requirement prior to the making of ice for our post-race refreshments. It's a tedious but necessary chore. Otherwise, there's always attempting to bathe, wash clothes, clean up, refill the diesel tank from the jerry-cans, rehang the courtesy pennants, rehang the ARC banner and so forth. In short, there's not too many dull moments.

Last night was a full moon (or at last close enough). It's big and bright, so bright that it's hard to see the stars. Very majestic out in the middle of the ocean with nothing else to look at.

Fair winds...