At the start of the night, a freighter showed up on a steady collision course. I stayed up past midnight tracking her carefully and adjusting as we went, and she eventually passed to the east with a closest point of approach of about one point eight nautical miles. Plenty of room on paper, but at night, distance behaves differently. The dark has a way of compressing space, and it felt much closer than the chartplotter said it was.

After that I settled into short naps between checks. The wind and boat speed were both building, but everything felt balanced, so I left the sail plan as it was. No squalls were showing on radar. A calculated gamble that paid off. We covered fifty nautical miles in six hours. If the pace holds, Cloud Nine may set a new twenty-four-hour record. We will see.