7:10 am
Hi ...
I was going to send this email earlier but I had to go and gibe and fix something on deck.
So again it's late.
Pretty uneventful night. Pretty slow as well.
Because of forecast we're going to aim east of the windward passage because SSE winds are forecast in a few days when we approach. If these wind materialize then we won't have to beat upwind to get to it. If the disappear from the forecast we can always shift our course westward without much loss of time. So now I changed our target heading from 180 to 165.
Alan

5:50 pm
I don't know if it is the misery of certain days at sea that make other days at sea so wonderful, but today was definitely one of these enjoyable ones. After that slow night the wind picked up from the right direction, seas were flat but for a long easy swell from the north, the sky cleared up to leave nice weather cumulus clouds and the temperature was just right: a bit chilly early on, a warm sun during the day and now a tad chilly again when in swim suit and T-shirt. Yes, I bagged my sweaters, just kept a couple fleeces out for the night, and pulled out my bathing suit.
I started the day with a sea water bucket shower in the cockpit; then some cleaning and a little reading with Dylan in the background, then we pulled out the new reacher (the large jib that we'll use on the pole down wind or on a reach - unlike the code 0 which is good only upwind) rigged it and hoisted it with great anticipation: and it turns out to be a great sail which increases our boat speed by almost a knot and a half over the jib. Before that, Nathaniel was reading in his hammock that he had rigged forward using the spinaker halyard; so he had to get out in order to free the halyard so we could hoist the reacher - life is tough. Lunch was frozen red baron pizzas, cooked in the oven, that pompous but ignorant landlubbers might consider trash food; but to the more refined palates voyaging sailors, they tasted simply delicious.
In the afternoon we saw 4 ships, one going to Kingston (yeah mon) and the others to the gulf.
...
I read the Spinsheet magazine (you know the free mag that we find in marinas) briefly and found out that the Hermione (you know Lafayette's frigate that we saw in Rochefort) was coming up the bay in June and docking in Baltimore (tell Brad for sure) after a transatlantic crossing. Lafayette was at the battle of Yorktown with her.
Also when you have time look at a magazine we have on the kindle called "Passagemaker". It's all about trawlers and once in a while there is something interesting - like I just read an article about how to go cruising in your 60's and 70's and making sure that the transition back to life on land is easy, and what to do with your house. And also some accounts of couples cruising.
Nathaniel has been reading a lot: Tania, East of Eden, Moitessier, poetry...!
He has done less Calculus reading but I'll push him a little more tomorrow. I was also reading one of my Differential Geometry book and I love the guy who wrote it...
Alan