Day 5 with light winds

June 7, 2008 Saturday 9 pm
Today the wind dropped off in the morning and we got slow but mellow sailing all day. We were able to maintain 3 knots of progress in the right direction so didn't feel like we needed to motor. On the other hand, Herb, our weather guru told us that we should get up to 35 degrees latitude for stronger winds and we couldn't seem to get above 34 degrees. We were going as high as the wind would allow with the sails sheeted in. If we tacked to go north, we would be making no progress at all to the east which is where we want to go, so we held on hoping that the wind would allow us to head more north. Wrong! Finally the wind quit altogether and after fooling around with some light sails for a while and getting a gentle chiding from Herb for not going where the wind was, we quit fooling around and turned on the engine to motor the 60 miles north. That is what we are doing at this minute. It is not very exciting, but by morning we should be sailing again after going through 6 gallons of diesel fuel.
On the other hand, the light conditions allowed Andi to indulge a fit of domesticity. She cleaned the boat, rinsed the cockpit cushions to get the salt out of them, made Walter's killer mojitos, and then crafted a dinner with some kind of Asian stir fry and some seared ahi tuna....accompanied by some Chardoney. And all this while listening to another of Tony's bands on the CDs he gave us before leaving. So now Andi and Merritt are tucked in their little beds snoozing and yours truly, the designated driver, is sitting here typing away.
There isn't anything much to do except start a new book. It is very lonely out here. We saw a ship a couple of days ago. In fact Merritt lost a few minutes off his life while the ship altered course to avoid hitting us. He woke me up to ask what to do about it, but the ship had already made the maneuver. Other than that ship, very little is going on. We saw some porpoises today and some shearwaters followed the boat. They didn't want the stale bread Andi offered them, so went away hungry.
We have 1667 miles to go now and are at 34d 37' N and 65d 24. W. I still haven't heard whether Google Earth will take latitude and longitude input so am waiting to hear from one of you who has succeeded at it. In the meanwhile, we are living well and are now some 600 miles away from the US of A. It could be worse - we could be selling used cars.