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American Spirit II - Day 61; We're Sailing, We're Sailing!; Wednesday, March 5, 2014



Mike was kind enough to let me sleep an extra hour, waking me at 7:00 AM instead of 6:00 AM. As I poked my head into the cockpit at Mike's urging, he pointed out a rainbow on our starboard bow. Nice. First rainbow of our trip. Still raining a little bit. 2,594 miles to go to Hiva Hoa in the Marquesas. Speed 7.4 knots over the ground, 6.0 knots thru the water. A helping current of 1.4 knots. Only one boat near us now, II Audeacious. Wind 9 knots just behind our port beam.

At 8:04 AM I rolled out the jib, turned off the motor, and started sailing. Not sure if we're in the trades yet or not. Won't know (maybe) for a day. Three hours later we were sailing at 8.7 knots over the ground, an increase in speed of 2.7 knots or 45%. Nice. We continued to sail between 8 and 9 knots all day, outdistancing the Tropical Trough heading our way behind us. At 9:00 PM the wind started dropping from 14 knots to 10/11 knots; and our boat speed dropped from 8.5 to 7.1 knots.

Beautiful night. New moon low on horizon, starboard bow. Ton of stars. Southern Cross and Big Dipper both visible together, 180 degrees apart. Try that Northern Hemisphere! Phosphorescence bombs sliding by the sides of the boat and transom. Lettuce sized balls of fire every 5 seconds are shooting by the boat or from under it into our wake. I have to figure out a way to film this. Not sure if my two video cameras on board can do so in such low light. As much National Geographic and Discovery stuff I watch on TV, I've never seen these phosphorescence balls displayed by them.

The wind tonight is light enough that we could put up either of our light air sails; our Asymmetrical Spinnaker or Code Zero. Our Asymmetrical Spinnaker is a spinnaker that does not need a pole, so it is considered a 'cruising chute.' Easier to fly and with fewer people needed to do so. To go along with our boat name, the colors are Red, White and Blue. Our Code Zero is turquoise in color and a larger than our jib. Both are on their own roller furling mechanisms. The reason we didn't fly them during the night was that Joel and Mike had already gone to bed when the wind lessoned, and I didn't think waking them up to do a major sail change was worth the loss of sleep for them. If we did that every time the wind went up or down, we'd never get 6 hours of solid sleep on this trip.

Brian Fox

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