I am a jinx.

The last time we wrote we told you that we knew that the winds would pick up. What we didn’t know was that the wave height would also increase and the wave period would decrease. Since we were heading into it, it all made for bad conditions.

Yet the conditions were the worst when I was at the helm. What the hell?

Here is the rundown:

Michael at the helm during his watch from 8:00 p.m. – 2:00 a.m. Oct. 31-Nov. 1: Over three kts 100 percent of the time. Yes, that is slow, but given the conditions, it wasn’t awful.

Cindy at the helm 2:00-8:00 a.m. Nov 1: Never above two kts. Also Cindy at the helm from 8:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. Nov.1: Never above two kts.

Before you disregard just how slow this is, think about how long it takes you to walk one mile. One nautical mile equals 1.15 land miles. If you can walk 3.5 miles in one hour you would have left our boat in the proverbial dust. Sad.

I was frustrated enough at noon that I told Michael that I needed to leave the helm station and was going to take a nap.

When I awoke from my nap Michael told me that we had been motoring at three or more kts the entire time.

That is when I realized that I was a jinx.

All kidding aside, *this really happened.*

Anyway, because we had finally picked up speed it was clear that it would not take two days to get to Port Ghalib as we had once thought. That was the good news. The bad news was that we would likely arrive at 11:30 p.m., which one simply cannot do.

So, we went beyond Port Ghalib and motored back to it so we could arrive after the sun rose. Ironic, really. It seemed at one point that it would take forever to arrive, and in the end we arrived too soon and had to kill time.

But we made it. Info about our first day in the next blog entry.