Wilderness

Good morning! And a good morning it is! As of 0800 AST, Sojourner is in position 19 13 N, 066 17 W, sailing about 310 T towards the Bahamas. By the way, if anyone wants to email us, you can do it at captaindennis[at]ocens[dot]net. Text only, no HTML, photos or links.

I just woke up for my 0700-1000 watch after a very restful sleep. Sailing offshore with four capable crew is really a luxury - 9 hours off between watches! This is a holiday... But not to get ahead of ourselves. There is a lot of ocean between us and the Abacos, and I know as well as anyone that anything can happen...

However, for the moment, things can't get much better. We had a rough start leaving St. Croix yesterday. The weather was fine, but the motion of the ocean was rather annoying. Kevin barfed. "Enough that I think my pecs are going to be sore tomorrow," he said. I took a while to get my sea legs too, but managed to recover in time to make a killer pumpkin soup for dinner from real Caribbean pumpkin.

We're far offshore now, finally away from the influence of land and shallow water and light pollution. No matter how often I do this I'm still enchanted by the wilderness that is the ocean. Yeah we've got modern comms that are letting me post this to the Internet almost in real time, but the beauty of being alone on our three-mile circle of ocean inside our horizon will never get old. The swell is regular now, large, impossibly blue waves with the occasional white foamy crest marching in across the starboard quarter while the sun rises in the east behind some perfect, puffy trade wind clouds. It's a friendly day today.

Sojourner is making 7 knots with two reefs in the main and the big genoa while the autopilot steers. I just finished my yogurt breakfast and am wondering what Mia is doing in Sweden and how my sister's first day at her new school went (she's a teacher). I'm pretty content.