It was a pretty quiet day on Dad's Dream. Certainly nothing as memorable as a few days back. Steve and Scott jibed onto port with the 2AM watch change. The wind has gradually been building an shifting to the south east. We expect to be on port tack for the next few days. The overnight and early morning hours began with some motor sailing and slow 3.5kn boat speeds. With the wind shift and gradually building breezes, our boat speed is now back up to 5kn and even better, we're back on the direct route to Savannah.
We took advantage of calm seas and slow boat speeds ealier in the day to attend to a varitey of tasks and making minor repairs around the boat. We did some laundry, and general house keeping. (It's easy to fall behind on those things when you're at sea.) We repaired another one of the connection points that connects batten cars on the main sail to the mast. It was the second of the 5 to break in the past few days. We decided to reinforce the rest of them in hopes of avoiding another occurance of the problem in the day ahead.
We saw a few cargo ships, refueled the boat using the jerry cans that have been strapped to the deck. We re-calculated our fuel consumption and determined that we need to sail about another 130-150 miles until we reach the point where we could motor the rest of the way home. Rusty gave us a lesson on basic engine maintenance. We checked the fuel filters, checked the oil, topped off the engine coolant and replaced the alternator belt that was just about to fail. (The other day we learned that when you're in the islands you need to ask for engine coolant. If you ask for antifreeze they don't know what your talking about.)
Lora took, and passed, the written exam for her American Sailing Association Basic Keel Boat certification. She already has her Coast Guards Captain's License so we were pretty confident she knew what the tall metal pole that holds the sails up is called.
The forecast for the next few days looks just about ideal, but the 72 hour forcast shows 25kn of wind on the nose for the approach to Savannah. We're hoping that it moderates a bit by the time we get there because it it will be a slow and bumpy ride upwind.
-The Crew B
