A couple of days ago we enjoyed pure sunshine with a clear night sky and a spectacular setting of the red moon.  Lesley watched the flying fish dance in the morning and posed as a perfect Bow Babe. But with this high came lower winds, we won’t  get to St. Lucia until November at this rate. 
John declared, “Enough fun, let’s point to the clouds!”
We motor sailed further south, crossing 15 N before turning south west again last night.

We reached our approximate half way point yesterday morning, day 10 of the journey.  Celebrations at dinner included Champagne and an incomparable chicken stew with an unpronounceable name!

Wind returned early this morning – sort of.
As we set up the pole for our genoa in the dark wee hours of the morning we discovered that the new block for the genoa sheet had failed, twisted and snapped! After less than 50 hours of use too.
Ugh!
Nothing else for it but to improvise. 
John quickly rigged up new lines to solve the problem and we were back in business for our westward run.

We have been sailing today but the wind is still very light. Our boat is not really set up for light downwind sailing such as is needed on this trip and so we are constantly nursing the sails along. We might not be sailing fast but just about anything is better than turning the motor on.

Everyone is soo very relaxed at present. This is just the medicine for a hard stressful executive’s vacation. It’s fun to see the routine. Lounge, make a pot of tea, lounge, think about the drinking of the tea, lounge, a little shut eye, lounge, drink the tea, lounge, finish the tea, lounge, move to the navigation desk, think about the log details, lounge, wake up and lift head off navigation desk, fill out the log, think about getting to the cockpit, lounge, fill out second entry in log
... you get it.

Timeless is certainly sailing faster than than the fish can swim though. We can’t think of any other possible reason that haven’t caught a fish for two whole days. Tuna sushi have been postponed 3 times already!

Bob is making instant coffee (ugh!). How can you put the words ‘instant’ and ‘coffee’ in the same sentence.  Bob is making instant coffee (ugh!) for drinking during the round robin Cribbage match played each afternoon. I’m thinking Bob is turning into the cribbage mastermind here  - unless Bob has something to say about that.

The Timeless log/trip meter registered 9,000 miles this morning. Les and I cannot remember sailing this many miles and can only assume that people sneak onto the boat each evening and go for a spin whilst we are asleep in the back cabin. Anyway, we think we have been under recording on this mechanical instrument with attendant inaccuracies by 15%. Putting our actual total miles at over 10,000 now.

John has announced that we might not be the most water frugal crew sailing the oceans. Since leaving Tenerife we must have used well over 800 liters of water. Perhaps there is a secret hot tub bather on an evening watch?  Or is it Bob G washing his hair?  hmmm..
Still, the watermaker is performing admirably and happily keeping up with demand. It’s like a magic fairy that fills the tanks for us each morning!

hmm.. time for sleep