Saturday Photos - SHTP qualifier

It became very cloudy on Saturday and there was rain in the distance. Made it harder for batteries to charge up but the wind abated underneath the cloud cover so very pleasant sailing

Low cloud. Damp day.

My seat. Even wet that worked great as cold insulation compared to pure fiberglass contact

Changing into dryer foul weather gear which got super wet very quickly...

Light air. Low speed.

Was getting ready to change headsail to a bigger one

*

Changing headsail

Done!

Happy to be out there

Weather calmed down and I had a nice beat up and a quiet meal. Changed sail to #3 and shook the reef off. Wind picked up again a few minutes afterwards (of course..it is called Murphy's law) offshore despite forecast that it would stay around 10 knots. so I had to change back to the #4.

 I was on a loose beats for days, until I went past the 100 nm limit (I went about 125 miles out although my GPS now says 140 miles), and then I got sick of 'upwind' and the west shift that I had been waiting for never seem to materialize so I headed south to have a bit of downwind fun which the boat is so cool for and since it wasn't really a race and I could go wherever I wanted...I had initially wanted to follow a routing based on Expedition but I totally messed that up so I had nothing to go on for that...

 Clocked about 15 knots of boat speed and averaged around 10 knots.

When I go this fast, and particularly during the night since there is basically nothing that you can see ahead of the boat, my biggest fear is to hit something. The likelihood might be low...but it is possible. 

It is one of these things that you probably shouldn't worry about much since there won't be much you can do about it, but the risk still exists.