L'Eau Commotion Westabout

6:00pm Saturday 6th January 2018 ( UTC-3 ) After a gentle night sail the wind gradually backed round to the South and we changed over to a Starboard tack around 6:00am. As the morning progressed the wind increased to I guess around the 30 knot mark and a little gusty. We are now hard on the wind with just a tiny amount of jib showing and the double reefed main well out but still making fair progress . The seas are gradually increasing and occasionally the gunnel goes under but all in all not too bad. We can expect a fair share of this type of weather in the next few weeks so it's good to know reasonable progress can be made to windward. Of course we can also expect much stronger winds as well but no firm plans are in place as to how to tackle them. The cabin temperature was 13C this morning and little changed through the day so the hot water bottle is welcome on the hands when coming in from the cockpit. I'm also putting on the full wet weather gear which served its purpose when some quite solid chunks came soaring over the doghouse while I was redoing the lines to the self steering gear. The good news is a favourable forecast for the next couple of days.