5:40 am
The winds from the low off South Carolina have been picking up since 1am and now are at about 18kts.I took a reef at 2am. We should be getting the strongest winds in late afternoon (30kts) at which point we'll just heave to to let it pass. It will have move off to the NE by early Sat am at which point we resume our course with following winds. For now we'll continue to head South on a close reach as long as it's comfortable. Our course is actually more like 208 over ground so we're we're losing some of the Easting we made but it's ok since it'll be easy to pick it up in the following days. We lost the current and the water temp has dropped another 5 d to 69 so we're should be clear of the eddy we were in yesterday afternoon. Luckily the seas are very gentle so far.
The night is completely dark and I had to use my headlamp to take the reef; it's probably overcast; we'll see at dawn what's up but I predict a grey day. It is definitely becoming civilized as far as the temp now. One layer suffices and the wind is kinda warm.
We made some paella with the oysters you'd bought and premium "paella packet" dating from the canaries. It was certainly good enough for 2 hungry sailors.
Using his ancient fountain pen, Nathaniel is making many log entries under the light of his oil lamp during his night watch. And with his sailors boots and bandanna, he is looking the part of the typical Hollywood pirate from a bad tv series!
I am sending this now (exactly 6am) and my MAxsea weather request. I'll check back at 7 to download the grib file and any mail.

6pm Burp---Excuse me!

OK so I won't focus too long on the computer if you know what I mean.
Nat is on deck being zen and looking at big waves.
WE've had quite a lot of wind during the day mostly 30-35kts. We were going SW in the am and then tacked to not get too much in the current again, which made us go east ort actually a little north of east otherwise called going backwards.
Now we just did hove to and the motion is better inside...so I managed already 5 lines without throwing up over the keyboard.
Some funny things happened: I violated rule #1 of foul weather gear which is to not go out in your jammies to help your son take the second reef; even if the cockpit looks perfectly sheltered: a wave climbed aboard and totally soaked; and that wasn't spray it was the wave it self. Nathaniel thought it was pretty funny. The other is that our monitor which is probably set to autorotate flips the picture occasionally when we heel!
I ... won't push my luck any further.
The wind shift and the end of this crap is schedule to take place tonight.