Atlantic Cup Day 7

There was still no wind in the morning and we are still motor sailing.  We were looking forward to Dan's shift at noon.  It seems that the wind always picks up during his shift and by 1:00 pm we were sailing again.  We still have 80 gallons of fuel which we would be able to motor 400 miles.  We are about 650 miles away, so we should be good.  We put the fishing line out again.  We have been seeing 3 birds for the last 2 days.  Dan and I tried to take pictures, but they fly very fast!  Paul made an awesome steak dinner!  We had a double reef in the main with the stay sail and part of the genoa up.  We were sailing great and the monitor wind vane was steering a course of 345 degrees.  It was perfect!  We new the wind was going to shift on us tonight from SW to NW.  We just were not sure when.  I started the night watch.  Everyone else went down to sleep.  We all knew it was going to be a long evening.  Around 7:30 pm I started to see heat lighting about 2 miles in front of me.  The storm cloud went in a L shape and was massive.  We were heading for the tail end of it.  Thank god!  I watched the heat lighting for another hour and a half.  Andrew came up for his watch at 9:00 pm.  Before he came up he put a crystal light packet in his water.  Well, it was red and when he opened it with his mouth it got everywhere!  It was all over his fingers, hat, lips, and he went to put his contacts in it got on them too.  As we were looking to port, there was another massive cloud.  We were calling it the cloud from hell!  The moon was on top of the cloud and showed you just how big it was!  We were scooting between the two cloud storms nicely.  We ended up with some rain and about 20 knots of wind.  We pulled the genoa in so we would not be over powered.  After 7 minutes, we were past the storms and were only going 2.2 knots.  So, we put the genoa back out.  About 20 minutes later, 11:PM, the wind shifted from the SW then to shifted to the NE.  So I pulled the genoa back in so we could tack.  Andrew and I tacked the boat safely.  When we tacked the boat it woke Paul up.  He came up and finished getting everything in order for us.  We were moving along well, however none of our compasses were matching up.  Ship's compass was reading 270, chart plotter was 220, ipads were 220, auto helm was 270, and gps was 220.  We could not figure out which one was correct.  I retired for the evening and the guys sorted it all out.  Ended up ships compass was right!  Thanks to Davis!!