Ambassador 10

We’re sailing!

We departed about 2:30pm yesterday, and the sea trial went well, with everything working as it was supposed to, so we kept going. A little after 3pm we had the sails up, the motor off, and were in Caribbean sailing mode. The tradewinds have been as forecasted, a bit stronger than normal (18-22 knots), and slightly north of east, which has been good for us. We have been rollicking along mostly between 8 and 9 knots, with a few hours of 10’s and a couple of 11’s in the puffs.

This made our first day’s 24-hour run right at 200 miles- an excellent start.

There is always some adjustment time on a new voyage, while everyone gets over the excitement of departure, gets their sea legs, and settles in to the routine. Marianne wears a scopalomine patch at the start of voyages, but even so needed to feed the fish once. Steve also started a bit woozy, and made 2 contributions, so he’s taken a stugeron an seems to be doing better. I’ve been lucky so far, other than not sleeping well in the heat (86 degrees was the low last night). So far we are just eating snack food, as nobody has felt like cooking just yet. And with the strong trades on the beam, our world is a bit canted anyway.

We started with full main and jib yesterday, under gray skies, but no rain. That worked well, but at 2:30am (why is it always at 2 in the

morning?) the skies cleared revealing a dense carpet of stars, and the wind picked up to 25 knots, so we put a reef in the main, which smoothed things out nicely. It was an easy procedure, all handled from behind the dodger in the cockpit.

Today has been clear and sunny, with a high of 92, and not much else to report so far, other than lots of flying fish, a few birds, one cruise ship and one private jet that circled us and waved.

15.25N 63.23W 200nm gone, 4507 to go 3pm 6/28