NF to IRE - Day 9

To date, the best sailing day of the passage as we averaged over 8kts. The 17-24kt wind and reduced seas made for a more comfortable ride today but some large swells remain which can catch you off guard as they did me a couple of times in the galley! We kept the second reef in the main most of the day as we were expecting a line of squalls that never came. We're feeling lucky. Plus the latest 5-day weather forecast charts are not as sinister looking (as they were yesterday) for the remainder of our journey.

So far this trip has been like a pleasure cruise relative to most of my prior offshore passages. In part due to decent enough weather and our points of sail (no beating to weather yet), but mainly because we've had crew. I've gotten so used to it just being the captain and me. Three hours on. Three hours off. And then we switched to four hours on, four hours off. This trip we tried something new, aside from having crew. We (3) each have one four-hour night watch (mine is 8pm to midnight) and 8 hours of sleep. Amazing the difference this has made. And today I got to sleep in - all morning! My captain said it was my reward for preparing and cleaning up after all our meals and serving treats for the official snack times - mid-morning, mid-afternoon and night watch.

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