Author: Pete

Location: 06°23.190S’ 101°33.436W’

Date: 11:00 March 4 to 11:00 March 5

Day 6 at sea.

Our fastest sail on record Saturday! 155 miles in the last 24 hours, averaging 6.5 knots. Doesn’t sound blazing fast, but that’s an average. In the morning when the winds were strongest we saw one 12 knot ride down a wave. It’s like a 32-ton skateboard. Very exciting. Good winds scoot us along, but choppy seas also.

We’re pushing plantains! Get ’em while they’re yellow and not brown! Yesterday was plantain bread, today was plantain pancakes, hot off the griddle with butter and syrup. Couldn’t tell them from bananacakes.

My night’s sleep is broken up into two pieces, 9pm-2am, and 5am-10am. I sat up awake in the middle of my second ‘sleep’ of the night and realized the towing generator wasn’t wired with a fuse. All the wiring is conveniently tucked under Liza and Felix’s bunk, so I was up fretting about that until they were up and I could do some wiring under deck on a bucking boat.

Our fleet is doing well. we’re holding pace with the pack for the most part, although the two 60 footers are screaming faster than us mere mortals. One back stay and another’s reefing lines damaged in the past days’ squalls. They cruise on though. It’s odd to have some 10 boats now all cutting the waves, all between 20 and 150 miles away, fairly close in the 3000 mile crossing we’re on, but we can neither see them, sense them on radar, nor hear them on VHF. Alone in our snow globe. That’s the way I like it, I suppose.

The two nights that we could see a masthead light on the horizon it became the focal point. Are they gaining on us? What’s their heading? Should we be bearing more south to take advantage of the conditions there? Bah! Who cares! It’s nice to have the quiet support of safety in numbers without being encumbered someone sailing right next to you.