Position: 34:07.82N 63:03.57W

Speed: 6.5 Knots

We left St George harbour at 3pm BLT yesterday afternoon and this time thankfully managed to get all our sails up without anything breaking. We headed almost due North with the prevailing winds for the afternoon and most of the evening at an average of about 6.5 knots hoping to get above the North Atlantic high pressure cell. At dawn we raised the spinnaker and eased into a Westerly heading that should get us to the Azores in 8 or 10 days if we continue to maintain our present speed of about 7 knots.

There is some confusion on board at the moment as to what the time is. Although we use UTC mainly, our wristwatches have been set to BLT, until we decided to set them back to BVI time yesterday afternoon. There are therefore cellphones and watches on board at the moment that are showing South African time, BVI time, BLT time and UTC time and when you combine this with the disorientation caused by standing watches at odd hours you get a situation where it is either about 9 am or 3pm, or possibly somewhere in between at the moment.

Poor Mari has been suffering with a bout of sea sickness since we left port yesterday and is not her strongest, though she still continues to do her share.  Its fairly overcast today, making the sea and sky two different shades of gray and the temperature has dropped off considerably since we left Tortola, we don’t have atmospheric temperature on board but in this time the sea temp has gone from 29.8 degrees down to 21.8 degrees. Thats going to make it pretty chilly when we heave to in the middle of the Atlantic in a few days time to go for a swim (Sorry  Matt's Mom, he, he, he).

 By the way, we have no idea what the official term for Bermuda time actually is, we call BLT simply because the coincidence with the delicious UK sandwich cracks us up.

On a personal note, Mari would just like to send a shout out to her Mom in South Africa. Hi Mari’s Mom!!  Hi Ma, moenie bekommerd wees nie, ek is ok.  Ek dink die seesiekte is ook alweer verby.  Ons doen nie veel meer as slaap, lees, tan en kook nie.  Met die dat ons moet beurte maak om wag te staan snags, is ons almal maar redelik moeg deur die dag en probeer inhaal met die slaap wanneer ons kan.  Dis ongelukkig nie altyd so maklik nie want dis warm en met die konstante beweging van die boot slaap mens nie ordentlik nie.  Andersins is ons vol jokes en geniet ons elke oomblik.  Rean is natuurlik in sy element en raak baie vies as die wind nie sterk genoeg waai nie.  Wanneer die wind wel waai smile hy van oor tot oor en hardloop soos ‘n bobbejaan hier buite rond om die seile perfek te kry dat ons nog vinniger kan seil.  Hoop julle is almal ok daardie kant, liefde en groete vir almal by die huis xxx