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BRIZO - Tuesday 29 Jan 2013



We are just over 600 nm from Fortaleza, continuing to make very good progress for an expected arrival on Saturday around lunch time. The wind has been fairly good; 11-16 kts from the SE. We are still configured for wing-and-wing sailing and will likely continue that way for the remainder of the trip based on the current weather forecast. Our sweet spot seems to be 13 kts of wind, at or above which we sail very nicely at 6+ kts of boat speed. Below that we generally turn on the engine at low rpm's to keep going faster than 5 kts.

The sail repairs done last week while underway seem to be holding up: the sticky-back upper spreader patches solved the problem of the tear and Lew's Frankenstein stitches on one of the upper seams are still holding nicely. Based on the limited availability of sail repair facilities in Fortaleza Lew may take the main sail back to the States for recut/restitching when he goes back for work in early February. Once we arrive in Fortaleza we have only six weeks of sailing to go until the boat is in Annapolis for refit and we want to be certain the sails have a good chance of lasting until then.

We had a culinary setback yesterday afternoon: out of cooking gas! We were unable to refill our propane tank in St Helena because of different fittings used there but were able to borrow an extra butane tank from Beatoo. We've gone through all of our remaining propane and the full butane tank and are now limited to the microwave. Because of her keen culinary abilities, Corinne cooked last night's steak dinner in the microwave and it turned out very well!

Corinne and the girls have been working hard on school work while underway in anticipation of spending the time ashore in Brazil exploring the country. We are all hopeful that upon their return to school late April the girls will be more-or-less at the same classroom level as their peers at HB.


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