One Girls Ocean Challenge

6pm Tuesday February 22, 2011

Paul writes: just off the phone with Diane and here is the afternoon update:

Diane has had a good and uneventful day. It was around 2:30pm when the breeze started to ease and 4pm when it dropped to about 5kts from the west south west. She is presently bobbing along at about 2.5kts.

There has been an unbelievable amount of freighter traffic but nothing to worry about. Diane did talk to one ship because they were not coming up on her AIS and she couldn’t make out their heading. As soon as she made contact with them, they popped up on her screen. Only one sailboat and one fishing boat have been seen so far.

Speaking of fish… A flying fish landed in the boat last night and met with a quick eviction. No reason to keep it she still has food. Diane’s daily rations of food have been working out well. Each day she has had lots to eat and had left overs which will be kept for backup.

It has been a great day for Diane to do lots of napping and catch up on chores. You may remember the motor got swamped coming out the Biscayne Channel. Diane thought it best to give it a once over and make sure it’s ok in case it’s needed. The motor fired right up.

Next up: sail maintenance. Diane stitched the head sail and is doing some splicing on the storm sail. When the satellite telephone update is finished, Diane will change the pendant on the tack of the headsail.

The puffy clouds are coming so she hopes this will bring some better breeze. {Tim: 10pm: tightly clustered updates indicate it’s still light out there. Nick is watching the dots to cross check to his forecast time of 4am Wednesday, for the winds to start building. Yes, sailing is highly competitive – even the weather forecasting.]

Diane mentioned again how much she loves her new sailing foulies which is thanks to the who came on board as an equipment sponsor at the .