Day Six Of Our Voyage

It is Saturday now and day six of our voyage. The winds were 15 to 25 knots with gust of 30 knots.  Still had 12 to 18 foots seas.  We were only sailing with a reefed genoa. We had another sleepless night.  However, the seas were not confused anymore and the swells are much longer.  Paul went down to make coffee after his morning watch.  The only problem was he forgot to gimble the stove.  So, when we heeled over, the coffee went flying and there were coffee grounds everywhere.  As the day went on the crew morale was low in energy.  Everybody is exhausted.  We have been getting beat up for days.  We pushed though all day trying to get south east.  However, the wind would not let us.  We did five jibes today on our way down the rub line.  It felt like we were zig zagging all day.  We were making progress to Tortola though.  There were many small squalls that came through which was nice.  I never thought I would say that, but the rain kept washing the salt off of us and the boat.  Still no shower yet and let me tell ya we are all ripe!  Due to the squalls we saw many more rainbows.  Around 3:00 pm we had a visitor.  The biggest sea gull I have ever seen.  He landed on our bimini.  Mike kept tickling his feet, but the sea gull would not budge.  The sea gull ended up hanging out with us all night.  We decided to just head south for the evening.  Instead of beating trying to stay on the rub line.  We put the genoa away and decided to try the main with a reef instead.  The boat became very comfortable and stable.  It was a lovely sail all night.