Distances and time are relative depending on where and when you are, 500 nautical miles might be more than you sail during a whole season or it might be the distance between you and the next shower. When our distance towards the Azores dropped under 1000 nautical miles we were close in our mind, not on paper. Damn, three digits, that’s almost home right? Yeah, but it’s still a bigger distance than our early legs on this trip. Right now the days goes fast but the hours have slowed down to a crawl. You stand watch for three hours (feels like 6 in the middle of the night) and go to sleep and stand watch and oops, a whole week has gone.
It’s our chores, cooking and washing up, that actually informs us that a couple of days has passed.
We still have a couple of more days to spend here bobbin towards Faial and that shower but it’s still closer to that shower than I’ve been in a long time. Last time I took a proper shower was down in Trinidad! No, we don’t smell (that much) I’ve been using our boat-shower and swum in the ocean but last real shower were at Coral Cove marina.
We did about three days of motoring before the wind started blowing again and now we have about 3-4 days more we can use but we won’t make it all the way if we don’t get some proper wind.

Another sailing yacht called up a freighter and asked if they could buy some fuel but they didn’t have a diesel of that kind on board. Maybe that is an idea for financing your trip. Stock up on fuel, drift around a couple of hundred nautical miles west of Horta if there’s no wind, and sell fuel at crazy prices. “Feel like buying some diesel? That’ll be your soul and first born, or you can spend 25 years drifting around out here.”
Now ask yourself, when was the last time you were 500 nautical miles from a shower? The water is getting colder, haven’t had below 24 Celsius in a long time.

N 36 18
W 39 49