Cocos Keeling to Rodrigues, Rolling Along, literally

Days 11, 12, 13 Wed June 1

Yuck! That about sums up the last three days. The winds have continued to build and, of course, the seas with them. We are now in a gale (over 35 kt) and have had a gust as high as 42. This is supposed to continue another 3 days, starting to diminish Sun/Mon. With the extra speed we will probably arrive a day sooner than expected, on Mon. we've been traveling with a bit of main and the staysail in the day. At night, we're going slower with just the main to be calmer. I feel like I'm half awake at night, and half asleep during the day.

The boat is handling things well enough with seas about 4 meters. Most waves are from the stern quarter and we ride over them .Occasionally one crashes into the cockpit and everything is wet. Sometimes the autopilot goes off with a bad wave temporarily. The SW swell is in front and occasionally crashes across the bow and decks. Water comes into the boat through one or more mystery leaking spots. I'm quickly running out of dry rags wiping up. The cockpit has clothesline strung around for drying them. It doesn't look much tidier down below. The last time we used the spinnaker it came down in the rain so we have had it spread out everywhere.

We're not doing too much except sailing and the necessities.