Day 8, Falkland Islands to St Helena

1030Z 23MAR22, Day 8, Falkland Islands to St Helena. Yesterday was a mix of high cloud cover and then a sunny afternoon. The winds and waves gradually built over the day. The boat is slowly warming up and we are (slowly) shedding layers. We enjoyed a beautiful sunset and amazing sunrise.

Current Position: 43 59S / 037 04W
24 hour progress: 116nm, 4.8kts avg SOG. Overall progress for the passage is 1072nm, approximately 2,310nm to go on the great circle route to St Helena.

We started yesterday sailing as close hauled as we go in open seas without pinching, about 50 degrees to the apparent wind. We started with 1 reef in the main and a full genoa. In the afternoon the winds built and we gradually reefed down. By dinner time we were sailing with 3 reefs in the main and a full stay sail. This is generally a slow configuration, but the course was better than being faster and sailing less into the wind. That said, this is not a very comfortable point of sail no matter the speed. Especially as the waves build and the boat bashes into them.

We had optimistically hoped we would be closer to a beam reach than we ended up. The weather forecasts had predicted the wind to be more northerly than we have seen. So, because we don't want to run off too far south, we are staying close hauled so as to not lose too much northerly progress. It's all a compromise.

Nonetheless as the seas had been calm before starting this point of sail, it was comfortable enough to still give Megan a bit of a relaxed day. She enjoyed a nice bit of down time with her book. She also enjoyed her birthday wishes via email - thank you for your thoughts and well wishes!

Jon managed to make a lovely roast pork loin and pineapple dinner with some salad and broccoli. During plating, the roasting pan decided to fly behind the oven with the cooked dinner in it. He felt horrible, but there really wasn't a problem as it was all washed off a bit and perfectly edible. Delicious actually! Life on a boat!

In our bird update, the number of birds continued to decrease. There were very few yesterday. Though we did see a couple of prion flocks plus some petrels and albatrosses. And it looked like 2 skuas came by, one of which sure looked like they were considering landing on Zephyros before deciding to move on. But do skuas fly this far from land? Maybe when they migrate north from Antarctica or South Georgia (which we have been directly north of)?