Day 112, Year 6 Atlantic Passage, Day 9-Still Rolling Along
Date: Sunday, February 13, 2011 (1730 UTC)
Weather: Sunny; SE 15-20 with Periods of SSE 18-24
Air Temperature: 85 degrees F (mid-day)
Latitude: 04 40.406 S
Longitude: 019 58.302 W
Miles Traveled: 1117
Miles to Go: 2732
Location: Passage from St. Helena to Caribbean (Grenada)
Windbird is still rolling along, having another great day of downwind sailing. We had our second in a row squally night, but nothing major. And we had a sunnier day today than yesterday although it is starting to cloud over a bit in the late afternoon. The wind is staying with us and during the night and most of the morning we had long periods with increased winds. So we continue to make great progress clicking off 130 to 140 miles per day. We still haven’t touched a sail since last Monday afternoon. Our heading is a little more northerly than the planned course, but we’re making such good time we don’t want to mess with things. We’ll just keep heading this way until we run out of wind and then we’ll motor straight north until we have wind again. We should have no problem going more westerly once we are in the Northeast Trades. So at least that’s today’s plan. We saw two more ships last night but nothing today, so it’s not getting crowded out here yet.
We now have a regular radio sched with Bahati and Traversay III. And finally today, they both have wind. Neither has quite as much as we do, but they are able to go a little better than 5 knots. So that’s great. Traversay is two days behind us and Bahati is about seven days behind. It’s good to talk to them each day and know they aren’t too far behind. I’m back to working on my spring cleaning projects and have started reading Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln. Mark just finished Atlantic by Simon Winchester and is now reading King Arthur by M. K. Hume. We both feel incredibly rested as we are getting plenty of sleep. So again I must say, passage life is good.
