I just finished my 1-3am watch. What an exhilarating night. The wind has stayed with us through the night tonight unlike most past nights. The wind speed is 18-22knots with swell heights of about 3 meters. We are really moving fast tonight seeing common speeds of 8,9 & 10 knots and speeds of 14-16 knots at times as we surf down waves. We currently have two reefs in the main and the gennaker up. Our course is 275M. If the wind gets too much higher we'll have to pull the gennaker down but I suspect the winds will stay within the same range as they have been.
Initially on my watch just a halo of stars could be seen overhead due to cloud cover but now almost all the stars are on display. I read a clever trick in the book "How to Read Water" today. If you want to know your latitude just locate the North Star (Polaris) and measure its height (angle) above the horizon and that's your latitude. To get a rough measure make a fist and sight down your extend arm; your fist width should be about 10 degrees.
We changed our ships time today for the last time on this crossing; we are now GMT -4.
We are currently 220 miles from Barbados.
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