The Great Blue

At last, the blue sky is with us. Almost. Still quite a few clouds, but
I have 17 amps on the solar panels, so the must be something right.
Meanwhile the wind has veered SE and with it all the problems related to
sailing with the wind on the quarter aft. For the Monitor to work, the
sails have to be well balanced, which means almost 2 reefs in the main.
This in turns causes us to loose speed and steering becomes more difficult.
Tomorrow morning, if the conditions are the same, we will set up the
Gennaker and see if the boat is better balanced.
Meanwhile, we came 152 miles closer to our destination over the next 24
hours, while covering 156 miles over the ground. That is because a
sailboat rarely goes on a straight line for ever and the zigzaging costs
a few miles. In the last 5 days (and 6 hours) we have consumed 15.5
gallons of water, that is an average of 2.95 per day. And we don't smell
that bad yet !
The sea temperature is still at 75, the air went up to 81 and the wind
is SE at 14 knots. At 6 knots we still expect to arrive on August 18
early afternoon.
Today, the fishing line is out again as we now need to catch a nice tuna.