18.30 Position:  46 40.5 N  053 24.4 W

Course: 140? Speed: 0 knots

Wind: South 4 knots

Talk about déjà vu - here we are once more drifting in the fog! 

Yesterday, having established the cause of our engine failure, and having confirmed today that the best place to fix this is St Johns, this morning I put the boat back together again to get her ready to sail.  At 3 p.m. all was ready, I had replaced one engine mount with the only spare I had, satisfying myself that the engine wasn’t going to come adrift while we were sailing, and I had lashed a short bar to the prop shaft so that it couldn’t free wheel.  We looked at the weather forecast, it still looked good for making St Johns Harbor, southerlies freshening to 20 knots tonight, right then the wind was southwest at about 15 knots, coming pretty much straight up the harbor meaning we were going to have to short tack out but once clear would have a fair wind the rest of way just under a hundred miles to go.  At 4.30 p.m. we commenced weighing anchor.  The fog was patchy, thick in places, so once we had the sails up and Sylph moving Paul navigated from below, calling to me when to tack, while I sailed the boat.  It took a while, about two hours, but between us we soon cleared the entrance safely and were once more at sea. 

As we cleared the harbor the wind was about 12 knots from the south and we were making good a course of southeast which would have us easily clearing Cape Race.  BUT, now the wind has once more died on us, we are thinking that there must be a hole in the wind hereabouts.  Well now that we are out here, with no engine, we will just have to be patient.  Some wind will come eventually.

Will we get to St Johns before the end of the month?