40 degrees 01 min North; 073 deg 13 min West

Rushing downwind with the genoa poled out. New York is well over the horizon, and we're about 60nm offshore. It's sunny, all this morning's ice has melted long ago, and we have a 18-25knt breeze directly astern; so we're wing-and-wing and rushing down the miles. Right now we're doing just under 8 knts, well above our targeted 6 knt average estimate. A reasonable swell, but nothing to bad and the boat is riding it nicely. We've dropped quite easily into our watches; I think I had a little nap this morning, and I noticed Dan and Greg both passed out after lunch this afternoon.

Apart from sailing and navigating, we're sewing our drogue together. It's all set to be bolted onto the boat, but we're still splicing the parachutes onto the line - there's 120 or so of them - but we're almost done.

We have a little hitchiker. A small sparrow chick that looks a little lost. We've given it some bread and it looks happier, but of course nowhere near as happy as it will be flitting around in semi-tropical Bermuda. Hold the course little fella!

We're expecting a very cold night. There is no cloud to hold in any heat, so I think it'll be freezing, but equally some good stargazing. I think we're about 200nm from the gulfstream now, so if we keep up this pace we could be in it by tomorrow night. It is of course much, much warmer that what we're currently sailing through (the water has gone a darker blue and is 16C, up from 14.5 in New York harbor). Also not too deep yet: only 150'.

So all good. We're having a lot of fun so far in what is almost perfect conditions.

I have the graveyard 12-3am watch with Sylvain, so I'm going to try and have a little nap now, or at least read a bit of Shantaram.