We sailed overnight on a broad reach then this morning the wind
decreased to less than 10 knots, directly behind us. We’re on track to
arrive at our next stop, Bahia Santa Maria at 3 am. We don’t want to
enter a new (to us) anchorage in the dark, so we weren’t in a hurry to
fire up the motor. Instead, we deployed our light air downwind sailing
setup.

We have a 110% 570 sq ft Genoa poled out to port, with a 650 sq ft
Drifter on the starboard side. The Drifter is on a self furler and the
sheet is lead through a snatch block on the end of the guyed out boom.
Essentially, we have our two biggest sails, one red and one white flying
in front of the boat. There are a lot of lines to be set up for this
configuration, but once we had it set up, we haven’t touched the sails
for about 5 hours (so far).

The wind is about 10 knots, from directly aft and we’re going about 5
knots through the water. Ginger (the Monitor windvane) is doing a good
job steering, even with not much relative wind. The seas are also from
directly aft, less than a meter. The boat just lopes along.

Linda’s on watch, sitting at the helm, occasionally looking up from her
crossword puzzle to scan the horizon. Pete is her helper, not on watch,
but available if she needs help (like with a difficult crossword clue).
Colleen got off watch at noon and is sleeping. I’m nominally off watch,
but I’m monitoring the water maker as it makes 9 gallons per hour of
fresh water, using 10 amps of the 15 the solar panels are putting out.

That’s downwind light air sailing on Rover.

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