Motoring to the finish

With great reluctance we turned the motor on about midnight. The wind had backed all the way to the east, actually a little north of east, and dropped to about 12kts. We don't fly the spinnaker at night, and without it we could not make more than 5-6kts towards our destination (either gybing down the wind or sailing dead downwind). We could sail to the finish, but we would have to add another day to our trip.

Essentially we have about an 8-10hr arrival window each day. We don't arrive at night, so that eliminates 12 hrs of each day, and we can't plan to arrive too late in the afternoon since any small problem could push us into darkness. Had we continued sailing we would probably have arrived about 5-6pm, too late in the afternoon.

Even motoring we are plagued by the cross seas. We're motoring straight downwind which would normally put the seas behind us. Instead we have seas behind us, but also on our port quarter or beam so we still get rolled around. The sun will rise soon and we'll use our motoring time and power to make water and give New Morning a fresh water wash down. With the salt washed off the deck and lifelines we'll also be able to wash clothes and hang them out to dry.

It's been a long passage (3,000 miles and 16 days). We're tired and a bit cranky. But we also have a nice bottle of champagne in the refrigerator. If everything holds together for about 12 hours we should be drinking that champagne by late Thursday afternoon!