We were able to sail all night long.  The winds calmed down to 10 knots on my shift.  Paul decided to put more sail out, however we were only going 4.0 knots.  So, in went the genoa, down went the stay sail, and on went the motor!  Paul went to sleep afterwords.  Crew is pretty tired except me.  I have been sleeping pretty well at night and taking an hour or two nap in the afternoon.  We haven't seen any dauphins since the first night and have not caught a fish yet!  We are official halfway there now!  We are not able to here any other boats on the SSB in the rally except for Glory and Southern Cross.  As the day went on the wind totally died.  I made the famous shrimp dill pasta for dinner.  The evening we ended up motor sailing all night going 6 knots in the right direction!  Paul and Dan saw a meteor coming close to the water and Paul saw 5 shooting star that night.

Thursday; May 5, 2011.  It is sunny about 75 degrees with winds 10 to 15 knots.  It is a great morning!  We made good northering last night.  Paul added more diesel to the port tank in the morning.  We found a small dead flying fish on deck.  Around 10:00 am the winds picked up to 15 knots.  All sails are up and the motor is off.  Paul made an awesome egg medley breakfast which filled us all up.  We ended up skipping lunch.  In the afternoon our average speed was 7.0 knots.  Our top speed was on Dan's watch, 8.4.  We still had to hand steer due to wind shifts up to 40 degrees.  Everyone is getting tired.  We have been having great sailing days.  But, due to all the excitement there is little sleep.  For dinner we had spinach dip, chips & salsa, and sweet & sour meatballs.

It was sunny and 80 again.  The winds were still out of the NE blowing 10 to 15 knots.  We were still having 30 degree winds shifts too.  We had put one reef in the main and did not have the whole genoa out.  As soon as I got on shift everything was put back out.  We were moving along at 6 knots.  With the major wind shifts we had to hand steer all day once again.  Everyone is getting along great and are having a blast.  We are starting to have a hard time hearing the boats that are going to Bermuda on role call.  By now there are seven boats out of 26 going to Hampton.  We had pineapple pancakes for breakfast.  Fantastic!  We decided to talk to Herb on the SSB.  Herb will give you a personalized detailed weather forecast for your boat.  Since we left the rally we were not sure if they would still send us th

It is sunny about 80 degrees and winds are out of the NE 12 to 18 knots.  First thing we put all sails up.  However, we kept getting wind shift of 30 degrees.  Which meant everyone was hand steering all day.  Our autopilot was acting up and would not hold a course to save her life!  We put the fishing rods out.  We had role call morning and evening just like before.  The role call in the morning boats that were going to Bermuda were talking about how they were not going to make it by Sunday which was the party.  About five of them changed there minds and diverted straight to Hampton.

Well the winds never picked up last night and we averaged only going 3 knots all night.  In the morning we put up all sails and were going 5 knots.  We were all a little tired.  We were not used to our shifts yet.  Everyone was in good spirits and was having fun.  That evening we reduced sail again and the same thing happened.  Andrew is our communications guy.  When we were at the dock , we were able to transmit and receive emails.  As soon as we got out to sea we had nothing.  He figured out we were sending on wifi not on the satellite phone.  He changed the setting to transmit on the satellite phone instead.  We are good to go! 

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