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

So now we are off! I can hardly believe that it's time for crossing the Atlantic. I really have to tell myself that this is it, now I won't stand on solid ground for a long time, otherwise it just feels like a normal crossing and nothing more to it than that. Although there are some small indicators of the difference onboard Cantare. We have loaded the boat with a lot of vegetables and fruits! Before Cuba all the fruits and vegetables were very expensive so when we had the opportunity to buy some more price worthy stuff on Cuba we took the chance. And the boat is very well packed right now. Little Volare is nicely stewed under the table in our saloon and in the fore cabin's portside bed we have stacked a hole lot of things. This means that we have only 3 beds available for 4 persons. One in the fore cabin and two in the saloon. But that is actually no problem since one of us needs to be on watch in the cockpit. We now have 3 hours watches 2 times a day. Mine is the best one: 6-9! But after half the crossing we will change and I will get the worst one: 3-6. Well well, Maria who has that watch now says it isn't to bad. You just need some time to get used to it and then you adapt yourself to getting up at 3 a clock in the morning. The big problem now is probably what are we going to do with all our time off?! What am I going to do onboard Cantare for 30 days? I have started slowly with just reading books, sleeping, doing some workout, thinking about life and working on my tan. It's working out fine… and it's just 29 days left to go now!

/Catrine