Log Entry: May 27
        
         It is now 11:30PM. I am up getting ready for my watch. It is from 12:00 to
        3:00AM, hand steering. I also have the 12 to 3 watch in the afternoon. There has
        been NO WIND today! By tomorrow noon we will have run the engine about 75
        hrs during the first 5 days of this portion of our journey. The weather outlook says
        that we should have several days of favorable winds for sailing. I hope so as I am
        now managing my fuel very closely. The problem here is a huge mid Atlantic High.
        We should start working our way out tomorrow. The boats that sailed South have
        done better....more wind longer.  There are one or two boats that still do not have
        one hour of engine time!  They probably sail well in light air. We wallow in the
        swells. We need 8+kts of wind to move. We haven't seen that in a while. This
        makes the passage comfortable but in a motorboat!
         We have had several problems that we have worked on along the way. We had
        a couple of seams start to part on the mainsail. This was a result of the high winds
        approaching Bermuda. We patched them today. The forward head does not like a
        Port Tack.....winds coming from the Port side. It overflows so we had to shut it
        down and all use the Aft head. There is a speaker about half way up the mast that
        was getting loose. In the calm sea it was safe to send Chris up the mast and fix the
        problem. We also had one of the winches on the mast fall to the deck as we were
        launching the Spinnaker the other day. The end plate had worked its way loose. We
        were very lucky in that nothing went overboard! We gathered the pieces and put
        it back together. Needless to say we checked ALL the other winches! We have
        spent a lot of time trying to coax the autopilot into life. Actually we are using it for
        navigation information, it just won't steer the boat. I think the rudder sensing device
        has gone bad. We hope to get this fixed in the Azores.
         Because we are in the middle of this High the weather has been very nice after
        the first few days of rain and mist. The sunsets...we saw a "green flash"....have
        been great! A "green flash" is seen in perfect conditions just as the sun sets in the
        tropics. We are a little North but everything was perfect! The sun turned a bright
        emerald green just as it dipped below the horizon. Today the sea was ablaze as the
        setting sun reflected off of the mercury-like coating on the sea because of the
        extreme calm conditions.
         We haven't caught a fish yet but keep trying. We saw a Sperm Whale, a pod of
        Pilot Whales and two turtles today. It is much easier to see the various sea creatures
        in calm seas.  We talk a few times a day to the other rally participants via SSB
        Radio. We all complain about the lack of wind but that's the weather! You never
        know!  It will be a long trip to Horta as a result of the weather but we are having
        a good trip and the sea is showing us a pretty side of her that we seldom notice.  
         33 58.5N, 55 16.3W        1316NM to go!     See you in the Azores!