Sunday August 20
Day 27 starts on a beating to port.
Dena had a lot to deal with last night with actually getting the boat on a tack that wasn’t going backwards…she succeeded but at a restless expense.
Dena’s 4-5 pm watch
4:42 pm: Damn, this is frustrating! A hundred miles from our destination and we can’t head within 60° of it…and even that is so slow. Unless we have major growth on the bottom again, I don’t know why we can’t point any better than this. Ugh.
It’s not even that being out here is bad. It’s not that much different than plenty of the other 27 days we’ve been on this leg of the journey. It’s the proximity of the sojourn point that creates the tension.
At this point, there’s no way we’ll be arriving overnight tonight. That’s a null possibility. We may still arrive the next night.
All the maybes I want to think about involve a wind change, which will either happen or not. Nothing I can do. So yeah, we’ll keep on keeping on and wait to find out what’s in store.
James’ overnight watch
My long overnight…we’re within a hundred NM of Horta and still plowing the close haul into the same nor’easter we’ve been trudging along all day…but, we’re going in the right direction and the boat is preforming admirably with a single reef and a slightly reduced staysail only…1.8-2.5 knots, can’t complain.
Monday August 21
James’ 10-11 am watch
10:20am Land Ho! I (James) sighted the island of Pico off the port bow…now if only we could get a break from this fucking Nor’easter.
10:23 am: I (Dena) got a good night’s sleep and we did get quite a bit closer overnight. That helped my mood. I’m still maintaining a mellow attitude, but it’s at that point where the wind could change and get us there in less than a day. Even if it does, I’ll have plenty of time to wrap my head around re-entering the world of other people…or at least to try.
