saturday morning, and we are motorsailing along at 9kts. the bad news is the motor is on... the good news is the sails are still up and we are getting pushed along nicely at low RPM. the other blessings about motorsailing... it's probably because the wind is light, which means the sea-state is also light. yes these are blessings indeed! and my personal favorite about the motor being on.....HOT SHOWER! yes today i got my first hot shower in 3 days.. de-funkifying we call it in delivery land. the seas have settles to a reasonable level... but let me start at the beginning!

we departed st martin at 1431 on thursday afternoon after a somewhat long morning of refuelling, final stowing, a crew phots and putting the mainsail on. yes that was an adventure in big rolly swells in the harbor and gusty winds. but the crew rallied and was anxious to go. so out of st martyin we had a nice reach down the coast and past anguilla headed north. we were on our course of 008 almost as soon as we cleared st martin and have stayed there since. it has been mostly close reaching at 9+ kts, but the seas were rather large and just fwd of the beam which meant lots of yawing and rolling... read... rather uncomfortable. it took it's toll on all of our bellies... except kate our chef - who apparently isn't human was happlily cooking and eating while the rest of us were chumming.

hats off to the crew! - noone has missed a shift and the teamwork has been great! the sun is out this morning for the first time and spirits are high. the boat has performed excellent and we have been under double reef main and anywhere from full genoa to triple reef depending on the wind, so she has been sailing fairly flat and fast... she loves a reach! we made 212 nm good in our first 24 hours which is the silver lining to tough weather conditions and we are on track to have a similar day today. i will be watching the weather near bermuda for a front coming off the coast of the US and that will determine how hard we push over the next 48 hours.

so that is it for now - more to come!

jonathan - One Two Many