Confortable Sailing

The last few days has been comfortable, if you can use that word to describe life on the sea. We have had constant 15-18 knots of wind allowing us to make our way north pretty quickly. The nights have been relatively dry with squalls being fewer and farther between. On the late night/early morning shifts you are able to look up at thousands of stars lighting up the sky with scattered clouds that floating by like huge piles of cotton balls. The only sound you can hear is the water splashing up against the hull of the boat.

We are losing our stable wind now only able to sail for few hours then fire up the motor for a few and back to sailing. Hopefully we only have 200 miles give or take a few before we can find a wind shift the will carry us in the direction of Channel Islands. It will be a comforting feeling when we start heading in the direction of home.

Yesterday was Sean's B-Day. He asked us to shorten a few afternoon shifts so that he can have the sunrise shift in the morning. Also we baked him a huge brownie!

--Jon

Yesterday was my birthday, and I started the day with watching the sunrise during the 4am-7am watch shift, I was rocking just my board shorts almost to the end of the shift and then got hit with a squall in the last few minutes. Was an excellent way to start my 27th birthday. We took turns watching some movies on my laptop, the only nice thing about motoring is that we have power to charge all of our electronics. We all shared one giant brownie for my birthday and had birthday pasta with chicken to share for dinner. I am now the eldest sailor on this vessel. I did miss talking to all my family and friends on my birthday, I didn't get one email, phone call, text message, or facebook update.. ha, I'll check later.

We are all up most of the day, chatting, reading, hanging out, cleaning up the boat and taking turns at the helm before we all scramble to sleep as much as we can between shifts at night. 3 hour watch shifts give us all 6 hours of downtime between turns at the helm, this seems to be working well so far, and the times rotate daily so you are never on the same watch schedule 2 days in a row and each of us gets their chance for the sunrise, sunset, middle of the nights shifts. Tonight I am on from 1-4 am, which means I will get to stargaze for hours and probably see a handful of shooting stars. Its a peaceful time to think and take in all that is happening. Shenanigans seems so insignificant compared to all the ocean before us, and even more so when you look up at night and compare our spot on this world to all the distant and far off suns.

We had to throw out some food that had spoiled in the fridge, so no more butter, cheese, or fresh non canned chicken.. You will be missed. I will now appreciate the comfort foods even more upon our return. The good part is now we don't have to worry about trying to run the icebox so much and keep an eye on the batteries and solar panels.

Ta ta for now!
--Sean

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--Matt
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