It seems that the wind was waiting for me to fall asleep… ‘Yep, she’s almost asleep, in just a moment…’ And then the wind fades and the bobbing party starts over – up and down, up and down – as the waves come in from all directions again. And again I am wide awake and back on deck… For many hours I wrestled with the sails and I couldn’t take the flapping noise of them shifting from one side to the other any longer. Poor ‘Gup’ winced with each flap and that deeply hurt because I knew that this would result in damage if we kept on going like that. I furled the Genoa halfway so it could not hit anything, then I adjusted and tied the mainsail at its middle position and finally I engaged Mr. Yanmar, the small engine. Needless to say, we didn’t make any good progress this way. Guppy was still heavily rolling back and forth but at least with the engine running the waves would not treat her like a cue ball. The sky remained cloudy for the rest of the day and finally in the afternoon the wind came from around the corner for a visit. There is still a steep and high swell but as long as there is enough wind I can live with it. Otherwise everything onboard is going well. From time to time I chat with other sailors and in the last days I spent lots of time reading books. I still have many books onboard that I haven’t read yet which includes the books on my unfavored school subjects for HAVO 5 [final year of High school]. When I am finished reading them, I’ll have to start over with the books I already know…

Laura