June 29, 2001

Cosmos

N 22^o45', W 084^o15'

Life aboard Cosmos is finding a more settled groove. The crew is acclimated to the rolling seas. We are getting to know our new sails and we even launched and jibed the full spinnaker today. We haven't run engines since we pulled away from the fuel dock two days ago. We are cruising at about 5 to 6 knots most of the time.

Most of our navigation and sail handling is directed at keeping us from going to far to the left and ending up in Cuba (pun intended). With purpose, we got close enough to take a look, and we did see a fishing boat returning to the island. It looked wooden and not much like the iron work horses we see off the East Coast.

We have employed our solar panels and water turbine electricity generator to allow us to go longer without running the engines. There are two reasons to run the engines. One is because we have too little wind, and the other is to generate electricity. We could not have gone this long without running the engines if we did not have the other means to generate electricity.

The electricity hog is the autopilot, which consumes about half of all we can generate. Our batteries are getting low and we will run the engines and make water while we recharge the batteries tomorrow, even if we have good wind. So far the water maker is great. We have taken showers every day! Ok, we haven't shaved much, but at least we don't smell too bad. We found that if we pump a couple of gallons directly into gallon jugs and put those directly into the refrigerator we have wonderful drinking water.

All aboard Cosmos are missing friends back home, and most of all, our wives and girlfriend. I am certain it will make our bonds grow stronger.

More later.