Typically tropical sailing today. It was mostly good. The sailing day started for me at 22:00 the night before. From the get go, it was not boring. With wind dancing all over the east side of the compass from northeast and low, like 7-8 knots, to a roaring squall that came up from the south, south east. Whew, was I happy for the 1.5 reefs in each big sail as the anemometer climbed to a hair under 30 and we zoomed along at almost nine knots! Strangely enough, the rain missed us completely. I watched it on radar skipping just a quarter mile off our bow. Of course, by the time Captain was up at 01:00 hours, the excitement had passed, the wind came back from the south east at 13 knots and he thought I was telling him a tall tale! The 04:00-07:00 watch was easy with no excitement. We shook out the sails at 07:00 and by 08:15 we were under a huge squall system that produced the maddening stsug syndrome (a term we coined for inverted gusts)...when the wind diminishes instead of accelerating in short bursts. All day the wind varied in the 11-18 knot range, as big cumulus clouds floated overhead. We had a good noon to noon run of 149 miles, and the huge waves of yesterday flattened out producing a nice ride overall. For lunch, we ate last evening’s leftover zucchini quiche with a spinach and baby tomato salad, and for supper I made a big stir fry of lots of the veggies from our fresh food box, spiced em up with ginger, basil, lemon and soy sauce, and put the whole pile on a bed of buttered basmati rice. Yum yum! We do eat lots of tasty things on our Sweet Dream, and playing in the galley is one of my favourite offshore past times.
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