Day 16 - Half way

I call this post 'Day 16', because we started from Annapolis, but it's actually been a bit less than two weeks since we set off from Cape Henlopen. And considering all the storms, nights spent hove to, and hours lost doing things like, oh, climbing masts, I feel okay about reaching the half-way mark today.

Well, what we are calling half-way. Cape Henlopen is at approximately 75W and Flores, the first island in the Azores, is around 31W. That's 44 degrees of longitude to cover, and we've done 24, as of tonight, with a day's end of 159 nm, a record for us. So well done Petronella, and well done us!

Both the US and European weather models say we should have 8-9 days left to go, which probably means 2 weeks (yes, I'm still skeptical of these long range forecasts, and you have to factor in things going wrong.) But 8 days or 2 weeks, I think we will be fine. We've got plenty of good food, thanks to our home canned meals (no, I won't stop marveling about how well they've turned out for us!) And we should be good with water, as long as we continue to be careful with it. If not, we have an emergency water maker.

I won't say anything too glowing about Petronella's condition, because I'm not a damn fool. Of course I'm not going to tweak King Neptune's nose and say she seems solid as a rock since ending the shake down part of the cruise. That would jinx the heck out of us. But she seems okay at the moment. She's fine. That's all I'm going to say about it.

Likewise, we are in good shape so far, although Helena is well ahead of me in the tanning department. I will say we are well settled into the sea going life, and are feeling very comfortable doing all the things we need to do on deck and around the boat. For example, I had to put a reef in the main, without turning into the wind (no one would do such a thing at sea) in about 5 minutes, start to finish. That's not rushing, just doing it right.

So, in short, we're doing okay too.

Today was Father's Day, of course. I celebrated by making a chili. I started by sautéing an onion and garlic with the chili spices and herbs to form a flavor base, then added a jar of our home-canned ground beef (fully cooked), and cans of red beans, corn, and tomato sauce. Served it over whole grain rice with a twist of black pepper. Yum. Finished with a desert of canned peaches. We still have plenty of apples and oranges, but we were both craving something sweet.

I really need to bake a cake…

We had moderate winds and seas under blue skies today, so we won't have another record run tomorrow, but hopefully we will knock another degree or two off the remaking distance.

Tonight, we were becalmed for awhile and we could hear the sea birds gathering around us. They often do, because we must attract them, being the only thing out here at the moment. They chirped at each other with a kind of laughing chirp. Hard to describe, but nice to listen to.