If it seems that I am a bipolar schizophrenic typer - I am. Today was very nice. The squalls are gone, the sun came out, and the wind is beginning to back behind us. All of these things are making the passage very comfortable again - and with the better weather - the punchiness returns. We like to tell the story of the look on Hal's face when the traveler support snapped. When Hal knocks on my hatch it is usually a bad thing - we can laugh about it now.

We listen to a lot of music on Azure. Today we had a dance party in the cockpit to the B52's. The highlight today was seeing CR in the cockpit dancing to the song "love shack" - he actually knows all the words. I still think that Hal likes Elvis, but he denies it. Jamie is too serious to listen to music on his watch - but I see him lip-synching from time to time - yes, a motley crew we are.

Today we are heading for the barn! - 584 to go! This decision did not come easy. Our illustrious navigator "Herb" has recommended that we continue sailing east until Friday before we turn north. This will add another 4 days to our passage that is already taking a long time. Herb's path will definitely be the safest. So we pulled down all the latest weather files and discussed our strategy with our buddy-boat friends Belle Brise. Herb is trying to keep us out of the 20 to 30 knot winds that will occur on Thursday. The wind will be behind us with some pretty big seas. But it is behind us. So our strategy is to sail with a double reefed main and jib until the wind gets big. Then we will drop the main and sail with the jib only. We tried this today - and the catamaran sails really well with the jib alone.