Well, they didn’t make 6pm. I know because I was sailing in Newport all afternoon watching the horizon. We went in from 5pm and at 6ish I got a call saying they’re still a few hours out. They planned to be on the dock getting cleared through customs at around 8:30pm. But they’re well in range of cell phone towers so you can call them on any cell number you know they have. I know Jake’s and Pete’s phones were both on and Marnie’s was off.

On the phone with Mom again right now. They actually just had a fish hit while I’m on the phone. They’re at 38.02N 70.31W. They’re north of the stream in the ugly water. Still sailing and now asking me about my coastal forecasts so they they know what to expect tomorrow.

Well, they called from 37.24N 70.22W and they’re officially in the stream. They’ve got less than 200 miles to go and the water temp is 79º (they’re in for a real treat when they get on the shelf to 55~59º water!). Jake’s side caught another Mahi (Ruleo brought it aboard) and then both sides hooked up at the same time. Pete and Ruleo both landed black tipped tuna with Leo’s help on the back deck un-braiding the lines. They also had a 200lb marlin spool Jake’s line losing his best lure today. Ruleo actually fought it for a bit, but while sailing, it’s not exactly realistic to think you’ll do anything but lose a fish of that size. That puts the fishing score at 4-2-”a million” and -1 for the birds… Jake’s winning of course.

They’ve got 20~25kt of breeze and are still having a blast sailing. They were able to see the feeder bands to the tropical depression yesterday and last night they got to watch the lightning w/o getting hit with any of it. Sounds like they picked the perfect weather window to sneak out of Bermuda. They’ve got another front to cross tonight and they should be in sometime tomorrow night.

Yeah, they’re NOT in any danger WHAT SO EVER from the tropical depression that’s out in the Atlantic right now (it made our local RI news). It is the reason they stopped in Bermuda, but they stopped so they could slip out behind it and everything is going exactly as planned. They’re sailing along in about 25kt of wind, and they’ve put 204 miles in in the last 24 hours. They’re flying along making “9s” over the bottom most of the time. They’re now saying they’ll be home “sometime Saturday” but they’re thinking after dark (the GPS says as early as noon when they’re really flying). It’s a bit squally at times now and Pete and Nancy finally got wet on a watch today. I guess they had 9 squalls on the radar (the rain shows up just like on the weather channel) and 2 actually got them wet. No big deal, but they’d managed to miss getting wet until that point. They think they’ll be in the stream at around 6am and through it in around 12 hours.

Their current position is 35.29N 69.09W.

Well, the sat phone is now working for data, but somehow the Mac has it’s auto update turned on, so as soon as it sees a data connection, that hogs everything basically blocking their ability to send an email. So you’re likely stuck with me blogging whatever I get called with for the rest of the trip…

Well, they’re at 34.11N 68.17W. That’s in roughly 16,700 feet of water. Yes, sixteen thousand, seven hundred FEET! So they better not drop anything important. They had a school of dolphin around the boat yesterday. They left Bermuda at 6am (getting up at 5am to do so). They’re expecting to be in Rhode Island “sometime Saturday”. They’re thinking they’ll be crossing the gulf stream at some point tomorrow. Also, the guys took the usual case of beer up the hill to BHR making the rookie (Ruleo) carry it up the hill.

Sorry for the short message, but it was left on my voicemail at work today as my desk is getting moved so my phone was out of service.