Day 11 – Spinnakers and showers

For the past 24 hours, we’ve been sailing upwind towards a promised wind shift.  We can’t complain much about the upwind sailing, as Shearwater seems to love to go to weather – it’s so easy for her to go 7 knots in 12 knots of breeze.  With the recent headwinds we had, there were rain clouds all around us – very reminiscent of Pacific Northwest sailing.  This morning, we “arrived” at the promised wind shift, and eased sails.  We’ve put up our workhorse spinnaker, as well – the gennaker on a furler, mostly because we need to make sure the furler is working properly.  Several days ago we doused the chute into the bag, unfurled, because we were struggling to have the furler work properly.  Hopefully, we’ll get it straight with how to use it correctly and effectively – our issue may very well have been related to technique as we’re both more familiar with symmetrical chutes on keelboats.  We’re sailing along well now, in lovely flat water, and with the showers we allowed ourselves this morning, life is pleasant.  We carry less than 50 gallons of water onboard, so we’re pretty frugal about using it.  After a couple of days of changing in and out of foulies, getting saltwater splashed on your clothes which renders them now impossible to completely dry, and periodic drenchings from rain – a shower is heaven.

We are doing much better with routines and life on board, especially after a day of relatively easy night watches that don’t require reefing suddenly or needing to handle some other minor emergency.  Chris has listened to 30+ podcasts of This American Life, Splendid Table, NPR’s Cabinet of Wonders and other episodes (Spanish podcasts on the docket for today!), while Justin spends his evenings listening to music and reading magazines on the iPad.  Two nights ago, the sky was absolutely clear and amazing to watch, and spookily, there was an aircraft that passed straight overhead and low enough to see two red lights (presumably on the wings) and a single white light alternatively blinking.  It was technically the first sign of other people that we had seen in days, and we wondered if the plane might have been taking a closer look at us, as well.  We haven’t exactly missed the rest of the world as we have too many things to do and think about while sailing, but we are getting excited to make landfall – with luck, maybe we will arrive on Tuesday.

Current position – 40 25.40n 44 53.80w
Distance to go – 758.6 nm
24 hour run –  142 nm