2002

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Almost There!
Mar. 30, 2002

Ocean Planet: Panama-Antigua Report, the last night!
Position @ 2320 UT (3:20pm PST)
16 28N 62 56W, speed 9kts, course 96 deg. Temp 87, press 1011mb.

Well, after the days haven’t been quite as gorgeous as when I last reported, but not far off. We did have to motor most of the day yesterday, which results in an infernally hot environment inside the boat. Today it’s been about 50/50 motoring/sailing and we are scooting along under sail at the moment with the working jib at 9kts in 8kts of wind. If we were racing we’d have the light genoa up, but hey, this is fast enough…

The last two days have been pretty lazy ones. Aside from cleaning a few misc details we mostly read and nap while the autopilot drives. When the wind gets up to 6kts or so (and with a decent angle) I unroll the jib and shut down the furnace…I mean the motor. Greg will laugh at me since I will continue to fight to keep from turning the engine back on until we are barely crawling….

But mostly we rest up for the nights which are far more interesting. After the marvelous sunsets, the wind seems to come on a bit more steady, and soon there are rain squalls to look out for. They are a mixed blessing: the wind changes all over so there is a lot of trimming or tacking, but at least there’s wind! Sometimes the boat gets a nice rinsing too. We have a full moon later in the nights and the moonlight off of the puffy clouds is spectacular.

Early tomorrow we will arrive in Antigua and another voyage is under our keel. It will be exciting to get there, but we will be kind of sad the trip is over. This is a great group and we have had a good time getting through the rough first part of the trip to the easy sailing we have now.