Woo Hoo - We are moving again!

When I woke up for my morning watch I was quite demoralised to find that we still had no wind, and in the last 12 hours we've not travelled very far... day 3 and still 1900 miles to go to the Azores ... I watched the Queen Mary cruise by last night, brightly illuminated in the distance, and was envious of their engine power!

But having motored for a couple of hours now we have found some wind, and we're moving nicely at about 7 knots. Admittedly we are on port tack, so not quite the best direction for us - but at least we're moving! There's nothing that feels quite as bad as a boat sitting motionless in the water - especially a racing yacht like Dinah. She seems to come alive when she has wind. And that energy seems to be contagious as we all seem to have come alive too...

At the moment Andy and I are doing 3 hour watches, and Barry is "floating". This lets us get used to the boat and used to a dramatically altered sleeping pattern with the backup support of knowing that Barry is on hand if we have any concerns or want to validate any decisions. We had chocolate porridge for breakfast - one of the left-over items from one of the other OSTAR skippers who was shipping his boat home... if anyone offers you any, I'd pass on it if you have any viable alternatives!!!

Our position right now is 40 08.581N, 70 28.019W. Looking at the forecast we should have favourable winds until this evening at least, so the plan is to tack when we dip below 40N latitude. Starboard tack is more comfortable for sleeping but less comfortable for writing blogs and emails as you keep falling out of the seat at the chart table!

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Now to grab a couple of hours sleep before my next watch!