Day 21, Ascension Island to Grenada

1300Z 12JUN22, Day 21, Ascension Island to Grenada. 3 weeks at sea! And less than a week left to go. Another good progress day, more or less on rhumb line. The weather has featured rain clouds and highly variable winds.

Current Position: 10 57N / 051 27W
24 hour progress: 136nm, 5.7kts avg SOG. Overall progress for the passage is 2731nm, approximately 611nm to Grenada. We continued sailing a broad reach to downwind with 2 reefs in the main and the genoa poled out. We still haven't touched the sails. Week 3 stats: 1052nm actually sailed in the week which knocked off about 929nm of the great circle course. We ran the engine for 2.9h. (And we never posted week 2 stats: 827nm actually sailed in the week which knocked off about 711nm of the great circle course. We ran the engine for 20.3h.)

The winds started off steady and constant between 20-25kts, but have now gone quite variable again. Yesterday afternoon we started going through rain clouds and that brought the usually associated large variations to the winds. Low winds to high winds and back. The direction also shifted, moving 20-30 degrees and back.

Today's weather is gray, dreary and hazy, again. The sun occasionally peeks out for a short while and we saw the moon for a bit overnight. It helps that it is getting close to being a full moon that shines through cloud cover. The boat has gotten a few light rinses in all the rain. A good wash down is still needed.

Boat speeds are currently down. We are looking for the weather to stabilize a bit and deciding if / when we should put out the asymmetric. We're still rolling about quite a bit in the mixed waves.

The fishing line has been in the water and has come back onto the boat. We caught a little fish and let him go. We are constantly hooking more weed, and if someone doesn't want to actively tend to the line and clean off the weed, then it doesn't make sense to keep it in the water all day.

All else is pretty quiet. We are all starting to look forward to land fall and refining our guesses as to when it will occur.

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