Huzzah!!

We have just spent the last 3 full days sailing close-hauled into light winds, heeled over at an angle of 15 to 20 degrees. Normally, I would avoid such a course, but we were 400 miles east of Bermuda with only north east winds in the forecast for the next few days and no desire to motor that far.
All our normal routines became abnormal as we adjusted to living on the "low-side" of the boat. We read, we slept and we fretted as our boat launched off a wave and landed in the trough with a loud thud, but H2OBO handled it beautifully. Now we are motoring the last 60 miles with our eyes peeled looking for the first signs of land - BERMUDA!
As I write this, we have been at sea for 8 days, and it has been magical. The first 5 days were on a beam reach as we took the winds north and north east in an attempt to get north over a persistent high pressure ridge that was in our path when we left Florida. The winds circle around a high clockwise in the northern hemisphere so we needed to get above it to find westerly winds to take us east. As a result, we moved well north of our rhumbline course. Such, I guess, is life at sea. It gives me a deep respect for mariners who traveled before all the conveniences like GRIB, weatherfax, NAVTEX, and SSB radios that we have were available. We who have those things now have a pretty good idea of what to expect weather and sea-statewise, but they pretty much rolled the dice and relied on observations of clouds, air pressure,waves, and marine life. We never did get those westerlies and, as a result, had to sail into the wind.
I would like to thank Herb Hilgenberg, who tirelessly and voluntarily helps people cross vast distances by lending them his weather routing expertise over SSB radio every day. Thank you, Herb.
The whole experience has had a surreal quality to it. Our home has been moving, steered by our Cape Horn wind pilot exclusively and unerringly. We have been surrounded by an endless sea and sky by day and blanketed by countless stars at night. Occasionally a bird or a fish or another vessel appears and disappears and then it's just us alone again. We saw a whale jumping joyfully a few miles away, but never got a chance to find out what she was so happy about.

Morning,   Bermuda bound

We expect to drop anchor in St. Georges Harbour tonight and bring this part of our journey across the Atlantic to a close. Maggie is on the lookout in the cockpit and when she calls out "Land Ho!", I will be delighted to see Bermuda but I will look astern to burn indelibly into my memory our first crossing to a foreign land aboard our little sailboat.
Branko