BVI To Ft Lauderdale, Day 3

Our third day a sea finds the crew in good spirits. Everyone seems to have found their sea legs and no one is now suffering from mal de mare. I am still fighting the last of a chest cold, but Jen and Quinn are over their colds now.

Day two was a bit of a challenge as everyone was still getting used to being at sea and still fighting colds. The winds stayed in the mid 20's until early afternoon when they dropped into the high teens, still in the East. The seas remained in the 7-9 range, gradually abating to 5-7 overnight. We maintained sailing with a reef in the main until dawn as we were making decent time and there was still a risk of squalls.

Just when I came on shift at 2:00AM, the GPS data went a little haywire. Our position suddenly jumped 10 miles to the southwest, which caused François (the autopilot) to go into gyrations to get us back on course. Resetting the GPS and the navigation system did not help. After about five minutes, our position error jumped back to within a half mile southwest of what we thought was our correct position. Then, about 20 minutes later our position slowly drifted northeast, eliminating most, but not all of the remaining "error". This drift once again gave François fits as he tried to correct for what he was treating as a HUGE current pushing us sideways.

During both of these GPS position changes, our GPS showed that it was locked on to a minimum of 8 and sometimes 10 satellites. After considering the behavior of our navigation system, I've decided the error must have been in the data being received by our GPS antenna. Uncle Sam must have been making some adjustments in the GPS system. I've encountered erroneous GPS data on several occasions and have confirmed it using one of our backup GPS handhelds. The last time this happened we were just exiting English Harbor, Antigua and our position jumped a mile inland. Great Fun.

We did not have any more boarding seas yesterday, however last night we did have a boarding flying fish. He flew right over my shoulder while I was at the helm and landed in the cockpit. This was a big one, about 10 inches long with a 6 inch wingspan. I briefly considered frying him up for a late night snack, but it seemed more trouble than it's worth and so back to the sea he went.

This morning at dawn we shook out the last reef on the main and raised the Gennaker as the winds are continuing to abate and clock to the South East. You can see our 8:00AM positions on the Current Position page of our website.