Last night I woke up to a 28 to 30 knot squall, which is the kind of thing that gets your attention even from inside a sleeping bag. Nothing focuses a person quite like a sudden heel and the sound of wind doing something it was not doing five minutes ago. We were motor-sailing in twelve knots when it hit. I came up the companionway in a life jacket and not much else, which is a uniform, technically, and a quick one to get into. I reefed in the rain. Inside ten minutes the wind was back to manageable, which was about all the time we had. I will not lie, the adrenaline felt good. I was soaked to the bone, but with no clothes on, nothing needed drying. Small win.

The rest of the night stayed sporty enough that I brought the main up and put a reef in everything to balance the boat. With both sails reefed she settled into the kind of patient ride a tired cruiser learns to love, the bow taking each wave at the same shoulder it had been taking the last one, the autopilot doing the small steady work of keeping us pointed at where we were going.

Now we are about a hundred and fifty miles out, which is roughly twenty-four hours, and I am starting to count things. There is one egg left in the galley. I would love to say that was perfectly planned, but we all know better. There is a catamaran coming up behind us on a similar line, and a few small islands have started to show up on the radar. Watch duty just got a little more serious, which is its own kind of welcome news. It means we are nearly home.

This has been my longest solo passage. It is starting to feel like a real thing in the proper rear-view sense, the kind you can sit with at a quiet anchorage and turn over for a while. But I will save that thought for when the anchor is down. Today still has its challenges to write. The rest gets to wait.