May 27, 2010 Day 6
31 17.9N 64 23W
A Delightful Day!

Hello Everybody!

What a difference a day makes! The wind crept in during the night. Jake and Leo were able to fill the sails and motor sail starting at midnight and by 2 am they turned the engine off. Sweet silence! We had a lovely sunny warm day with a 15 knot breeze to cut the 90 degree heat and to push the boat. There were no waves, the boat was sliding along and the crew, previously frustrated by all the motoring, enjoyed every minute on deck. We made 172 miles by our 4 pm check in with Herb, and incredibly, Jake was able to both hear him and speak to him! What a difference a day makes!

We have about 65 miles to go to Bermuda and we’re slowing down (yep, slowing down) so we will arrive around 7 am for Customs instead of 4 am. We plan to fuel and go. That is, we’ll check in with Customs and pay our $210 fee for the privilege of paying $8 or $9 a gallon for diesel. Our rookie, Brian, plans to run the traditional case of beer up to Bermuda Radio and Dave will check the SSB connection on the backstay. Then we’ll be off to Jamestown.

On the fishing front: no news. All we caught was seaweed, some of which Dave ate. (Dave has an unusual diet. Among other things, he doesn’t eat anything that had a mother.) The water temp has dropped to 73 and the air temp in the cockpit is 75 degrees. The layers are beginning to come out: long sleeves yesterday, sweatshirts tonight. Even the boots have made an appearance. The marlin spike seamanship lessons continue and Leo has successfully created a “monkey’s fist”. (A monkey’s fist is put on the end of a long heaving line to facilitate the throw.) He has also made a nice looking key fob.

All the best from the crew of avalanche, looking for the glow of lights over Bermuda on the horizon and looking forward to making landfall!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 27th, 2010 at 7:21 pm and is filed under 2010 Trip North. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.