Day Four

Position at time of writing:
14 46.91N
112 58.26W
Heading 230T

Yesterday evening the winds began to lighten for the first time since we left. By 10:30pm we couldn’t listen to the clanging sails anymore and the continued lumpy-ness of the seas meant that we were really wallowing in the swell. Ughh. Time to fire up the engine. It was perfect timing as we needed to charge up the batteries and make water anyway (woohoo – means that today is a shower day!)

We ran the engine through the night – 12 hours – which calculates to approx 10 gallons of diesel burned, 10% of total carried on board. No more motoring until we hit the ITCZ. This shouldn’t be a problem since we think we’re getting close to the trade winds. The winds have shifted to come from a more north easterly direction and we’ve spotted the fluffy white token trade wind clouds on the horizon. We’re now sailing wing on wing and hoping for a few more knots to help pull us out of the swell.

I know it seems silly that I keep talking about my birthday. Really, birthdays aren’t that big a deal. But out here there’s not that much to look forward to in the day to day routine. This afternoon we finally had the little b-day celebration in the middle of the ocean, complete with happy birthday-singing candle, really gross dry brownies from the OXXO in Punta Mita, and a couple of presents to open. Huge excitement! Thanks family for all the thoughtful gifts 🙂

We’ve pushed Easter back until Thursday to spread out the events out a bit.