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Mazu - Day 8 - More Interesting Sailing



Another good day .... but with more varied wind conditions, still mostly from the WSW or SW. We put one reef in the mainsail overnight even though conditions didn’t seem to warrant it but just to be on the safe side. We also decided that we had gone farther south than we wanted to be so we gybed and sailed almost due north overnight. For me (Hope), the day began by a visit from the dolphins towards the end of Mike’s watch (I think they must love him). By the beginning of my watch at 0800 am, it was very tempting to shake out the reef and possibly pole out the genoa but then we saw some dark clouds to the northwest so we held off making any changes, which turned out to be a wise decision. The wind dropped first of all, then increased to up to 24 knots after going through a few rain showers. We had heard on the morning SSB net that boats further north seemed to have had a tougher time, more squalls and rain so we were happy we got away fairly lightly and by early afternoon gybed back again onto starboard tack and pretty much head directly for the Azores. We have since made further sail reductions which has had little effect on our boat speed but has made the ride a lot more comfortable and eased the load for the autohelm.
So, all is well onboard Mazu

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