avionbianca   Blog for s/v Avion

12:20pm, Sun July 13

We just dropped down to the A3 (smaller asymetric spinnaker) as we have more consistent wind and need to carry it higher as we are changing to be heading more west, about 230M. Expect about 15 knots most of today. We seem to be out of the low wind for now. The weather files are predicting what we are seeing, so that is great. Today we spotted and hailed Coyote, just a bit behind us, they are in our division. Great to see and hear others out here.

Yesterday we turned a corner, in that we had sunny skies, a real sunset, and yet warmer conditions. I took a bath, which was great. We had a great celebration for Nico’s birthday last evening as well. It was great to have us all on deck together and enjoying being together on this adventure through time and space. We had a real sunrise today, and its now warm enough below deck that I am going to have to switch to shorts and short sleeves. At night it is only a shirt and foulie jacket for me, sandals, no more boots.

Soon after sunset last night the full moon started to rise out of the ocean, we had bright moonlight all night, still in the sky at dawn today. Nico saw a few birthday shooting stars as well.

The engine is running great, holding its oil now, charging the batteries at 48 amps right now. We do about 2 hours a day of charging. Dinner last night was mongolian beef stew. The broccoli casserole just came out of the freezer to thaw for tonight. For the first part of the trip we have preprepared dinners that are frozen on dry ice in a cooler. After that its freeze dried dinners, which will be good too. Kent did most of the dinners, some are from Tom’s favorite grocery catering service, Nico drove the gathering for the freeze dried end of the food. Water and fuel are plentiful, the boat is sailing great, and we are all having a great time.