Thursday, November 10 at 2:30 p.m.

Greetings as we exit the Gulf Stream. 272 miles until we get to Bermuda. Current location is 36.56.923N 65.10.792W. Winds out of the south 30-35 sustained, which means gale force. Seas are huge - the boat pops over the tops of swells and slides down the back side. The seas are also aggitated and coming from many different directions. This sea state is typical of
the Gulf Stream. We were unwilling to divert 127 miles West from our rhumbline to enter the Gulf Stream at its narrowest. Instead, we headed East and caught the east side of a north meander with southeasterly currents, and then sailed into the front side of a southerly meander to catch a southeast current. Our crossing was an insane 140 miles of squalls, heavy seas, and gale force winds. The plus was that the current gave us a 2 knot per hour lift, and pushed our speed over the ground to above 9 knots occasionally. We have seen one other boat in 24 hours. That was a cargo ship which passed two miles off our stern around 2 a.m. last night. I brought plenty of books for the voyage, but have not opened one. Each person is on watch for 12 hours each day, and in between, one tries to sleep. Fatigue is great. We had our first hot meal last night when Ann cooked up some veggies for a modified Nicoise Salad (I know I am spelling that wrong - apologies to all). Today, the only intake has been an english muffin for each person and an apple for two of us. It is too rough to make tea or coffee. We are looking forward to a break in this weather. Things are supposed to shift to the Northwest tonight, which should get us back on our rhumbline. Cheers from the deep blue, Donna