The watches seem to bring with them fairly consistent wind variations. Jane usually gets a pretty horrid one with a dying wind from a tiresome direction. Venetia has nice winds and pretends she is driving her new Ferrari very fast, the faster the better. Sally nearly always has a wind shift or change in strength leading to manic activity for the second hour of her watch. Greggie gets whatever Sally leaves him with and has to put up with strict instructions about course and speed. Yesterday evening, it was re-set the twin running headsails on Sally's evening watch and at last we were sailing at an average of 6 knots. This morning, Jane actually had a cracking good sail with an increasing wind. However, with the wind having some North in it and with our very fast boat speed bringing the wind forward to almost on the beam, Sally's watch brought another sail change to reefed main and full double genoa. Not quite such good speeds, but definitely more manageable and better for the increase in winds that we are expecting. It is already a steady force 5 with more wind expected in the next 24 hours.
The crew are a little worried by their reflection in the long mirror in front of the mast. They are complaining they look a little peculiar and that this could be due to being at sea for too long. St Lucia is now about 730 miles away, but it looks as if the wind could be here to stay now, so there is talk about arriving on Friday, probably in the dark as we would like to arrive in daylight and Murphy is working overtime to ensure we don't get what we want!
We saw lovely White-Tailed Tropicbirds yesterday, one close enough to get a good ID and more flying fish.
Venetia has decided, now it is properly rugged with regards to big swells and some good rolls when they catch us wrong, to make bread. Should we be worried about her?
From Alcedo
Sent from my iPad
