Tuesday, July 2
The wind held easterly and built overnight, so we were sailing rail under by Tuesday, making good time. We were all a bit groggy as we adjusted to the watch system and new sleep patterns. I had the 0000 to 0300 watch, something that does take some getting used to.

The boat is taking a fair number of waves aboard so the decks are wet, spray is flying, and we need to keep the hatches closed to keep the interior dry. Today the sky was mostly overcast all day.

This morning we noticed that the bilge pump light was stuck on, turns out that debris in the bilge had gotten into the float switches and stuck them in the on position. Tom disabled the automatic operation of the pumps and we monitored the bilges after this.

During the afternoon we fell off a bit to the west to ease the boat’s motion, but we would pay the price for this on Thursday when the wind backed to ENE and then NE, making it impossible to lay St Georges on starboard tack.
No ships or other boats were seen all day and night. We had leftover spaghetti for dinner.

A word about overnight watches. Our watch system called for each of us to be on 3 hours and off 9 hours. So there was only one person officially on watch. The way Distant Star is set up, this is fine and easy to do. The sails can all be controlled from the cockpit and we have radar in the cockpit as well. At night we had a rule that every person on deck wore their harness/lifejacket and stayed clipped into the boat via their harness tether. If it was necessary to leave the cockpit at night, Tom, the skipper/owner, had to be called – turned out it was not necessary at all. Of course anyone off watch was free to come on deck as well, so there were only a few times in the wee hours were someone was truly alone on watch, but this was a special time as well. Picture is Don fully equipped for the Bering Sea in January.