Jack woke me at six this morning and said we needed to get more sail up. We raised the mainsail all the way — a rare thing on an ocean passage — and we are now sailing full and by. I love that term. It means all sails up and drawing. We’re in light winds, making steady progress. Our forecast shows the winds abandoning us and we’ll have to motor when it does. This stretch of ocean is prone to frequent fronts marching along with some regularity and we have a window now with nothing threatening until the end of the week. We want to get safely into port before any nastiness crops up, and for that we don’t have the luxury of waiting for more wind. So as soon as our average boat speed drops below 5kts we’ll fire up an engine and forge ahead. Luckily the seas have settled down quite a bit and it’s no longer a gymnastic exercise to cross the bridge deck to get a cup of tea.
We have three other boats within about 30 miles of us. We’re just trying to keep up.