181 nautical miles in the last 24 hours

Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Happy Birthday to my "older" sister Dorothy. Go wild and crazy!

Hola. We continue to be very lucky with the weather and continue to exceed our daily average of 177 miles per day. After a peaceful overnight sail under the full moon, another clear, sunny day dawned and we've successfully put up the genneker without incident. Peter's got us all well organized and even Joe you would have been proud of how it went up like clockwork! Doug and Peter are in their element as they are hand-steering achieving 9 - 10 knots in 20 knots of wind from the Southeast. (As I write this, Peter just cheered that he went 12.6 as QuickStar surfed over a big swell

Since Shelby is completely at ease now on the boat, she's been a welcome whirlwind of activity. She has soundly beaten both her Dad and Peter in Boogle (no surprise to you right Kylie and yes, she had to twist his arm to play). I"m still holding my own with her and she's determined to step up her game. Charli, she now loves crosswords as well, so with her 12th birthday fast approaching, it may be an idea! As I write this, we are singing along to Mama Mia and she is patiently waiting for me to finish so that we can practice the phonetic alphabet and then play Double Solitaire.

We are all now fully into a comfortable and relaxed routine, which includes Peter & I making dinner one night and Team Roehrig making it the following night, while the alternating team does dishes. We usually eat at about 5:00 p.m. so that we can get the dishes done and then we gather in the cockpit to watch the sunset and reflect on the day (okay perhaps my Caveman Peter can't be that introspective as he has a can of beer, but there is hope that with another few centuries, he just might be). Three of us then hit the hay by 8:00 p.m. with either Peter or Doug taking the first 4-hour watch. They rotate alternating nights between this earlier night shift and the midnight - 4:00 a.m., with me taking the 4:00 - 8:00 a.m. watch (yes, I pulled the Princess shift which features stars/moon and the sunrise).

We have reached another milestone, besides being almost halfway there already. We are officially out of fresh vegetables and bread/buns. We had alot of our vegetables go bad, lots of eggs had to be thrown overboard, as well as the bread (Halldo, we didn't have the option of getting Bimbo bread that lasted you guys 9 days - still can't believe you ate that styrofoam stuff!) We still have about 3 days worth of fresh fruit left, although the bananas are just being used for banana bread, etc. Tomorrow morning Shelby and I will attempt our first loaf of bread (yes, Martha Stewart watch out!).

So have a great birthday Dorothy. Miss you and thinking of you!