Well, what a sailing day!

We flew our poled-out sails until around lunchtime, when the wind eased slightly. To keep up our pace, we took down “the scaffolding” and hoisted the spinnaker. Mark and I have become quite efficient at it, though it’s still a bit of a process.

Once the spinnaker was up, we made some great miles, really pushing the upper range of wind it can handle. Sailing under spinnaker feels less like moving through water and more like gliding. The sail gently lifts the bows, preventing them from burying into the waves after a surf, which usually slows things down and disrupts the rhythm. Instead, everything feels smoother—almost like flying.

Of course, once it’s up, it’s tempting to keep it there… until conditions remind you otherwise.

With a perfectly timed gust and wave, we briefly lost control, and the spinnaker started flapping violently before we managed to bring everything back on course. Thankfully, no damage was done – only 3 seconds of “what just happened?” followed by 3min of “how lucky are we??” – a solid reminder to stay humble.

I turned in early, only to be woken around 9:30 pm by the relentless wind alarm, which Mark and I had set to 26 knots. A strong and rather big squall passed over us, bringing sustained winds of 32–33 knots. By then, Mark had already reefed down the Genoa to handkerchief size. 15min later it all went back to normal.

I can’t help but wonder if this was just a “friendly” preview of what the coming days might bring. Hopefully, it’s just my squall paranoia talking.

At the very least, it reminded us to take those dark clouds seriously: reef early, relax later!

So, a day of beautiful sailing mixed with a fair bit of action. Maybe not exactly my preferred kind of excitement—I’d take whale encounters or shooting stars any day—but on day 13, you take what you get to keep things interesting.

And looking up at the stars tonight I can’t help but think it’s all so worth it!