It's finally warm enough to sleep outside at night. The wind last night was very light overnight, so the boat required supervision to ensure that the sails stayed filled and didn't bang. We'd been hearing an annoying squeaking from the mast over the last day and it was betting louder, so it was time to investigate. After a morning coffee, I climbed up the mast!

After a morning coffee, I climbed up the mast!

What a cool experience. One of the coolest things I've ever done. 60 feet above the water while underway. You can see so far, but there isn't anything to see, just water! I took a couple of pictures of Tyler on deck way below. I found the squeaking. The genoa and halyard had stretched to the point that the halyard knot was rubbing on the pulley. It was also rubbing through my brand new spinnaker halyard. We repaired the problem by shortening some hardware, unfortunately the spinnaker halyard is 25% damaged and shouldn't be used any more. I'll have to replace it eventually. Since it's cut at the half-waypoint, it will make a good pair of sheets.

After all the hardware and tolls were cleaned up, we declared it Beer Day!

We figured it was about noon our time, and we had a serious problem onboard. The salt water in the bilge had been rusting though our beer cans at an alarming rate. Upon inspection yesterday, we had cans that had simply corroded and emptied into the bilge. So we set out to drink whatever we could save.

Of the cans that were under the floorboards, we had to write off five Pilsner and a six-pack of Smirnoff ice. That left us with three Pilsner and a Sleemans (The Sleemans was border line drinkable). After that locker was empty, we were still thirsty and tackled the last two bottles of Spinnaker's beer and couple Guinness that were in a dry locker. Followed by a couple cigars. We worked hard in the morning, so we felt it was fair to relax in the sun in the afternoon. The scary part is that we have 730 miles to go and six good beer left between us.