It's sunset and we've traveled a little less than 70 miles since sunrise. No matter the wind and sea conditions on our boat at sunset and throughout the night we reef the sails (make the sail area smaller) or use just our small jib and the mizzen. If conditions change at night it can be dangerous to go on deck to take the main sail down. All night we will take turns on watch. Hopefully our trusty Monitor Wind Vane will do most of the steering, but we have to keep a lookout for other boats and hazards. We had some practice with heaving-to today when some 30+ knot gusts took us by surprise with a lot of sail up. Once we got the big genoa furled and the mainsail down we took about an hour to just chill while the boat gently rocked in the swell. All in all a good day and a pretty one. Here's to an uneventful night, just about 3 miles offshore.
