Khaleesi - Log Day 6 sublime sailing with the cruising chute

Our sublime sailing with the cruising chute came to an end as I suppose it had to. The wind died almost completely and the news from across the fleet on the SSB net was the same for everyone; no wind. We limped on for a while but then gave up the struggle and turned on the engine. We went through the night and decided at about 10am the following morning to get the sails up once again. But the wind gods were busy elsewhere and only 5 hours later the engine was switched back on. It seemed that apart from one or two others everyone else had done the same in an attempt to climb further North towards the 40th latitude, where rumour had it there was some weather to be found. We have a respectable amount of fuel on board, but by the next day I becoming concerned that we were consuming too much fuel too early. But then, knot by knot, the wind began to build and we turned off the engine once more. Up went the cruising chute and with two reefs in the mainsail, and a poled out genoa we made great progress. But the wind built a little too much and after a gust of 21 knots we decided to pull the cruising chute down. Despite easing the sheet, another gust of 22 knots pulled me off my back and onto my feet in a moment. Pete then added his weight to the snuffer line and we were able to pull it down and collapse the chute. By the time we had stowed the chute away the wind had risen and veered to the West. We continued under reefed main and poled out genoa making good speed. A car transporter passed by, the Heogh Seoul, and I asked the duty radio officer via VHF for a weather update which he kindly did. The wind would remain in the SW but would build tomorrow as would the seas. We were happy with this and decided to continue through the night with the sails as they were set. The wind and sea built a little more quickly than we had anticipated, and during the night the steering became increasingly difficult with the following seas "kicking" the stern around. Not surprisingly we gybed and although the gybe preventer protected the boom from crashing over, we could not prevent the genoa from backing and putting the pole under pressure. Our pole broke! Some quick action by the crew soon had the boat back under control, the genoa furled and the broken pole lashed to the guardrail. The seas made steering very difficult so we put a second reef into the main and accepted our boat speed would reduce. But after the excitement of the night we could not afford any other mishaps and decided to re-evaluate the situation in daylight. Mid-morning I decided we had to try to improve our boat speed and so shook out a reef from the main. The following wind and seas still made steering on our desired track very difficult but we did improve on our speed, and with a lot of focussed helming kept pretty much to our track. This would allow us to climb North above the 38th latitude, and would then hopefully provide us with a good run down to the Azores. However, they are still more than 1000 miles away, so a bit early to start thinking about that. But so far on this leg, we have had all sorts of weather; beam reach, downwind runs, calm seas, big seas, no wind, too much wind. Our attempts to supplement our meals with a fish supper have also failed which is a shame, but we will continue to try and catch those elusive tuna! In the meantime we continue to enjoy the pre-cooked and frozen meals that my wife, Allison, prepared in the weeks before the Rally began. We also listen enviously to some of the yachts on the SSB net, who have covered almost half the distance and are way in front. We sail on in the hope that Neptune will be kind and provide some favourable weather before too long.
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Khaleesi at 5/21/2018 11:18 AM (utc) our position was 37°27.96'N 053°44.48'W