July 10

July 10, 1900 hrs. Position N 36.40 / W 153.46 115 miles over the last 24 hrs.
Today was a pretty good day. We lost wind last evening and fired up the motor at about 2200. We motored about 5 hours, then it was my turn to wake Bob up. The wind had come up at about 14 knots and was holding but was square on the nose. We put up sail and changed point to a more easterly heading. When I got up later this morning Bob was grumbling about going the wrong way and no relief was in sight. We played with the sails, ending up with all 4 sails flying, the jib, the staysail, the main and the mizzen. After some tweaking we gained about 15 deg in heading then had a bit of a wind shift to bring us up another 10 - 15 degrees. We have had a beautiful day of sailing since, holding anywhere from 15 - 30 degrees, calm seas and 5 - 6 knot average. Just really nice sailing conditions. I spent most of the day just hanging in the cockpit, did some reading and played with sail trim. Bob ended up in a much better mood and, as I said, it was a pretty good day. We have lost a little heading this evening but feel pretty good about the progress we are making. We would really like to be going more north and get up towards 40 deg. but we'll take what we can get for now. We expect to hit a hole sometime in the next day or so and will motor due north when that happens. All else is good out here and we are both in good spirits and our bellies are full after Bob made chicken fajitas for dinner. I think he may have been holding out on Becky all these years. ;)