Our brilliant full moon is past its best, it rises to splash the sky with a rosy glow then settles down to a waning glimmer. A fine sickle now, it will be gone in a few nights.

The weather has been very mixed. Our good spirits dipped during 5 days of thick, deep cloud with cool temperatures, much rain and frequent squalls, not too fierce but adding to the general gloom. The log book entries started to include 'drab continues'. We spent much more time down below and the duvets came out – ugh! 'Is this it?' we wondered, thinking that northern lows would be the norm as we ploughed through a most uncomfortable sea which was tiring and awkward. No, definitely not, the barometer was rising, it moved up from 1016 bar to 1024 during all this gloom. One last grey squall and heavy rain marked a change, the sun peeked through during late afternoon of this fifth drab day and the seas continued to calm overnight. The morning brought lighter skies, the cloud filtered away gradually and the golden orb returned to warm us up. The barometer settled and sailing became just about perfect if a little slow at times in the higher pressure. The seas evened out and have been gently undulating with variable swells, some have been really high but with long and regular intervals making life on board very agreeable.

The lighter winds have needed more sail changing between genoa and cruising chute to keep us busy and there have been a few calms when we have resorted to the engine. During one of these we decided to cut the engine, stream safety lines and take the plunge. Swimming in 15,000+ ft of water was exhilarating and surprisingly not very cold. It was totally clear like looking through the air and enabled an inspection of the underwater hull area which was fine apart from a few barnacles which were scraped off; all traces of Sargasso weed have gone.

There has been little traffic. We see a ship about every couple of days, usually far off but one had to be called up during the night as it nosed a bit too close for our liking. They had us on radar and gave reassurance but when a ship is travelling at 18 knots the further away the better. About six sea birds, shearwaters, have been dipping and swooping around us but we seem to have lost them now. The only other wild life seen are the Portuguese Man of War, they are few and far between little armies of rather small ones but still with the diaphanous inflated sails that glisten in silvery blues and purples in the sun. Frightening beauties.

Now we have lost the wind, Gryphon II is in the Horse Latitudes with long hours of motoring and our downloaded weather maps show more to come over the next couple of days. It makes the boat very warm, great for rising the bread and making yoghurt whilst we live in the cockpit. It is day 14 of our journey and we passed the last 500 mile marker on the chart earlier today, there are just 466 miles to go so hopefully we shall arrive in the Azores on Monday 15^th June by which time we shall be getting westerlies again.

A light wind has come up, it is 01:00am so it's nice to be able to turn off the engine and have some peace during the dark hours. Will it last? Boat speed is just 2-3 knots but the sails are filling and we are holding course so we carry on and wait to see what the next watch brings.