Day 13 – When the planets align

Although we haven’t had lots of clear nights, we have had a few, and currently, there are actually planets aligning – all in a row with the moon!  Jupiter is just above Venus and the moon is sitting right between them. Earlier in our trip, we saw Mercury and Saturn, as well (according to our iPhone app, Star Walk).  We are now in an area that seems to have more moisture and clouds, so it’s not likely we’ll see any super clear nights for a little while.

Justin and Nicky (the autopilot) have an ongoing competition to see who can get the boat going faster.  Justin’s got the highest boat speed of the trip so far (14.69 knots), but Nicky’s been effortlessly winning the daily games (today: Justin – 10.94 knots and Nicky – 11.06 knots).  We pulled the gennaker down this morning after having it up for more than 24 hours, simply flying along.  The wind was building just a bit, though, and with the slightly bigger seas, our boat becomes more and more animated until at least one of us doesn’t sleep so well, even with earplugs to drown out the freight train noise – Chris gets the short end of the stick since Justin is competing against Nicky.

We opened up a can of Washington State University cheese that we ordered – it’s a big ol’ tin of sweet basil and monterey jack.  It’s been fantastic, but the one drawback to eating on board is that we have to be good about trying to finish things before they go bad.  So, we’ve had pesto pasta with basil cheese, quesadillas with basil cheese (twice), and lots of impromptu cheese and crackers.  We still have half of the cheese left.

It’s been a little disappointing that we have yet to see whales.  The Azores have a reputation for being a great place to see them, though, and historically had some whaling stations.  We might get lucky in the coming days – we want to see them with plenty of space between us and them, though.  To date, we’ve seen many shearwaters (unfortunately, Chris forgot her pelagic seabird book to see about identifying them to species), a sea turtle, lots of flying fish, a Portuguese man-o-war jellyfish, and several pods of dolphins.  We may start seeing more things as we approach the Azores, which are essentially volcanic islands rising from the seafloor.  Pico, the island next to Faial where we are heading, actually rises something like 24,000 feet from the seabed!

Current position -40 22.35n 37 35.31w
Distance to go – 428 nm
24 hour run – 193 nm