While crossing the Caribbean Sea yesterday evening, up on our system pops an unusual alert: Tsunami Advisory. There has been a large undersea earthquake off Honduras, and most of the Greater Antilles are on watch for a possible tsunami.

For a boat in the deep, open ocean a tsunami is a non-event. Right now we are sailing in water almost 3 miles deep. Even the largest, most powerful “tidal waves” pass under the boat totally unnoticed.

Fortunately, it appears that the waves are small enough to not be dangerous. The forecast arrival time for the waves has come and gone without reports of significant coastal damage. So we get to add a new ocean experience, sailing over a tsunami, and the local coastlines do not have to deal with a major disaster. Win-win!

We continue to crank out the miles at a fast pace. The boat is performing well, with no mechanical issues. In 18 to 22 knots of wind, we are making 8.5 to 9.5 knots of boat speed, hour, after hour. There is the occasional tradewind squall passing by in the night time hours, but they haven’t presented major issues.

We weighed anchor 43 hours ago, and we have covered 319 nautical miles since then. We have been running a bit ahead of the routing predictions so far, Our most reliable forecast has us at the entrance to Brunswick Harbor about midnight on 16FEB.

We are now about 24 hours from the Mona Channel between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. From our past experiences, this is likely to be the most challenging sailing of the trip. Currents are strong, and confused, and there are frequent squalls and thunderstorms as the tradewinds blow down off the mountains of Puerto Rico.

Once through there, we will turn left, sailing between Cuba and the Bahamas, until we pick up the Gulf Stream off the Florida Keys, and then ride that conveyor belt north.