Im off! (And then some!)

I left Antigua as planned Sunday morning just before 8am. It felt a bit rushed, since I had arrived on the island only 18 hours earlier. But I was able to get everything I could think of completed, and I generally like to navigate around islands, shoals, reefs, etc. in the daylight, so off I went.

That was almost 48 hours ago. Since then, the winds have generally been idealjust abaft the beam and 12-20 kts. So Resolute has been cruising along in the 8-9 kts range. Sometimes we surf to more than 11 kts; sometimes we slow to the high 6s. About half of the time Ive had a reef in the mainsail to keep the boat relatively flat and comfortable. All told, Ive been averaging 7.8 kts made good towards Maine.

The sargasso weed has also been a factor in my speed. Yesterday morning, the wind fell to 9 kts and Resolute slowed to circa 5 ktsway too slow for those conditions. So I headed up into the wind, started the engine, and drove in reverse for 30 seconds or so. A huge clump of weed came freewho know how long Id been dragging that around. Anyway, with the weed cleared away, I was back to 7.5 kts even in those modest conditions.

What have I been doing? Mostly sleeping. But Im starting to get better acclimated, doing some chores and catching up on this blog.

More soon!