Day 11 - 990 miles to go

June 13, 2008 Friday 9pm - first night watch - 32d 56' North 50d 01' West
We made a lot of miles today. It was 20 knots of wind downwind with a 1 knot current helping, so we must have averaged above 7 knots. For boats that's decent - but it's about the speed of a healthy senior citizen on a beach cruiser bike with 7 speeds. Of course, the senior citizen has to peddle 24 hours a day, but this trip is like riding a bike across the USA.
But we aren't working that hard. Those who knew me when I was young would marvel at what a lazy sailor I have become. No more running around the decks putting sails up and taking them down to squeeze out an extra .25 knot. No, these days I just think, "hmmm, if we put it up, we'll just be taking it down in a few hours". So we have sailed the whole time with just our regular 110% jib and mainsail. We put up the spinnaker pole to extend the jib a bit better, but that is it for exertion. We've come some 1200+ miles now with nothing more than that. We motored about 8 hours, but the engine hasn't run in a week and probably won't until we arrive.
There are two unsung heroes here - the autopilot and Andi. The autopilot has steered every minute except for about 5 minutes when we turned it off for a while. Day and night,we lay around and read books, write emails, cook, enjoy hot showers, and the autopilot just sits out there and keeps us going in the right direction. It follows the wind on nights when it is so dark we can't even see the sails. Amazing! And Andi - today, thinking that we might get some bad weather, she cooked up meals for the next 3 days so that we just have to heat and eat! She won't let the rest of us cook because she has the galley organized and wants to keep it that way. So Merritt and I are living like lords!
It looks like we are going to miss the worst of the bad weather. We have been moving so well that we are ahead of the storm and, if all goes well, on Sunday afternoon we should finally be able to turn and run directly to the Azores. That will be terrific.
Best to ya....