how can a day not be great when it is started off with the world famous cabbage and bacon breakfast. i used half a cabbage and a pack of bacon for this healthy start breakfast and had it ready for aimee when she got up. she was very impressed and we discussed the fact that this was the first breakfast i had made since the very first night she stayed over.
after breakfast i add a bit more gorilla tape to the area just inboard of the clue patch we had 5200ed on. in retrospect we should have made the patch with more horizontal and less vertical strength but it seems to be holding well with the gorilla tape and perhaps we can get a sponsor for the rest of our trip! i climbed up on the boom and aimee handed me up tape and i slapped it on to add additional reinforcement to the sail. after this we got the main out (i already had the genoa out) and shut down the motor. we where sailing along at 5 kts in 10 kts of wind off the beam. i believe this is what bill predicted although it showed on no grib files i have seen!! bill where are you getting your weather?
we spent the day relaxing reading and eating another great tuna wrap lunch in the cockpit. the wind lasted almost all day until around 3pm we finally had to take in the sail and start motoring. we are expecting this motoring to last another 3 to 4 days but based on the latest computations we should have about 90 gallons and be able to do this no problem at 5.5 kts or so
we took the wind dying as an opportunity to do a quick swim call. aimee and i realized we really had not been swimming together since we first met as the water has been soo cold in the canaries. fortuitously this was not at all the case here. while in the water we removed a 2 meter length of green florescent line that had somehow gotten caught in the rudder and you could see just poking out the back of the boat. we did menage to remember to take off our man overboard tags and strobes before jumping in but just barely.
after the swim we adjourned to the cabin top for day spa followed by happy hour and another great sunset. we are really enjoying this rum lime brown sugar and soda concoction aimee came up with but alas are now down to our last lime! just as we thought everything was over and where heading below for the karl net the whole sky exploded in color and aimee managed to catch it on her camera (so no sail pic today). we had another appetizer dinner and aimee went to bed promptly at 7pm. in spite of trying to do nothing but relax today we still where pretty tiered from the sail event yesterday.
i had a hard time staying up with no coffee but managed to give aimee an extra hour of sleep by taking a few 20 minute naps on my watch. tomorrow we expect to be in full on motor mode. we will spend as much time up forward working on our tans as we can.
cheers,
roger
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