At some point I knew we would have to face the music and that moment came last night at 2300 hours. I downloaded email messages and a grib file via our single sideband radio (SSB) and what I received I didn't want to read. Will (my onshore navigator!) sent me an email telling me that we were still 12 deg. (or around 700 nm) east of the trades. Laura's email confirmed the same. With a fuel tank somewhere between 1/4 and 'E', I made the executive decision I had been dreading for almost a week -- no more motorsailing. With nearly 3,000 nm still to go, we need to save the rest of the fuel for refrigeration. (Our refrigeration has an engine-driven compressor so we have to run our engine an hour or two each day to cool the plates down.)

That was a fairly depressing development. But it got worse.

After finishing my work on the computer I brought up our chartplotter to put in the hourly entries into our ship's log. Only I found out that the wind instrument decided to go south! So not only are we dependent more than ever now on the wind, but we don't have the data to help us with our decisions!! I spent the next hour and a half of my shift sifting through the consequences of these two developments,and their impacts on our voyage.

When I awoke Jim at 0330 for his shift we sat up for about a half hour discussing the situation. I reminded both of us that we still had plenty of food, water, & propane, and an engine that runs if/when we need it to. So all is not lost. The fuel thing is more of an inconvenience in that it doesn't allow us to motor through the soft spots.

We discussed the wind instrument. Either a plug is loose just behind the readout, or the bird we had at the top of the mast coming into Huatulco did something to mess up things at the top of the mast. From the deck all looks good, so it will take me climbing the rig to check it out for sure before we will know.

The good news is that about a half hour after I went to bed last night (around midnight) the wind picked up and we have been sailing in 10-20k all day long! It is the first day we have been able to just sail and not turn the motor on! It has been rather magical. As I like to say "Better to be lucky than good!" So we are clicking off the miles today much faster than we have been able to. And other than an occasional soft spot, there seems to be no signs of the wind dropping in the near future. Of course, we still have 3-500 nm to go to get to the trades. So I am not being so naive as to think this will last that long. But for now, the going is good!! (Except that already it looks like the evening could be a long, slow one!)

It is quite amusing to watch the birds -- Jim calls them "gannets" -- hunt for their food. It is quite comforting to be this close to nature and be able to take the time to study the habits of an animal like this. But then, there isn't that much else to do aboard, I guess!!