Saturday, November 25, 2006

Coming to you from Cat's-Paw IV under sail at 26 degrees N and 113 degrees W . We are actually 1400 nautical miles away from our home slip in Sidney. We are under full sail on a broad reach traveling at 6 knots, it is 12:30 A.M. or 0030 in sailor talk. I am alone on deck, Barry is sleeping, he will be on shift at 0100. Wendy, our wind vane, is working very hard to keep us on course so I decided that I could manage a blog update while on shift. The stars are bright, the moon set about 3 hours ago, it was great when it was out, it's light streamed across the water and just sitting in the cockpit listening to the waves break around the boat and trying to figure out the stars, it is my slice of heaven on earth.
There is no light in the cockpit, the compass light broke a few days ago, Barry tried to fix it but needed smaller wire than we have on board. We have turned off the instrument that reads the depth and are steering by the stars and the windex on the top of the mast. Orion's belt is just to the left of the mast and when I see it I know I am on course. Pretty soon I will have to pick a different star as Orion will rotate to the west out of my vision, hidden behind the sail. We are headed for Bahia de Magdelena about 120 nm away at this point, it was 180 from our last anchorage so we figured it would take us about 36 hours to get there, so we left about 5:00 P.M. in order to get there about day break on Nov. 26. We will spend 2 nights there and then head to Cabo San Lucas. I will put a position report in momentarily so you can all go and look to see where we are on the map. Take care and enjoy life, you only have one!!!!