Position: N 28° 00,7' W 079° 39,0' UTC 1700

Nautical miles left: 2604

Total nautical miles: 2922

Our original plan was to sail through the Bahamas which is the closest way to the Azores. But, yesterday we downloaded a big grib-file for the coming 7 days, and it showed that if we did as planned we would end up in weak winds most of the time or with headwind, forcing us to use the engine. The other option was to continue north with the Gulfstream and go above Bahamas and then east, the question was how much longer would that be. In the end the difference wasn't huge, around 45 nm more. When considering the fact that the Gulfstream adds almost 4 knots to our speed the decision wasn't hard to make, beating to windward or go with the flow, since we are long distance sailors we chose the easy way north, of course. So after less than 24 hours we are at the point where it's time to turn east, from now on we head directly towards Horta on Faial, the Azores. The total distance has therefore changed and to further ad to the confusion Sofia mixed up the numbers in her last post, before we had 2876 nm in total and after the route change we have 2922 nm. So far the 24-hour distances have been great, but we will soon leave the Gulfstream and be on our own again. Now it really feels like we are on our way, I like it! Let's see what kind of weather the coming days will bring us, it doesn't look like this crossing will be as easy as the last one but hopefully we won't have to tack too much. / The Captain