16:27.30N  45:48.10W

 

You may recall a few days ago that we were headed for New York rather than St Lucia, which meant that we were a bit out on a limb and were just about the most northerly yacht in the fleet some 120 miles north of the other leading yachts.  Well last night there was a bit of a wind shift and whilst we had already turned south a day earlier, we were now able to take advantage of the shift and we headed south west with excellent speed. This made us the second fastest yacht for the last 24 hours so whilst not making up any places we have closed up a bit.  The down side is that the wind shifted back a bit this morning and we are now headed for Venezuela. That’s OK though, because none of the crew have ever been there and it sounds quite exotic. We are expecting/hoping for another shift later today that will put us back on course and again faster than the more southerly yachts. Time will tell.

 

Today’s mystery is that Elaine has lost two bras. They aren’t in fact ‘lost’, just ‘redeployed’, but as she isn’t allowed out of the cockpit as she is an accident waiting to happen, she doesn’t know what’s going on on other parts of the boat. This was another major contribution to our excellent performance yesterday. I’m not sure exactly how John and Elaine’s ‘compact’ cabin is organised, but John managed to lose a pair of trousers for nearly two weeks after leaving Madeira and he only brought two pairs with him.

 

The fish have had the upper hand again today, two strikes, no fish landed, one lure lost. The steaks last night were delicious by the way and today’s tuna salad came out of a tin despite our best efforts. I’m just a bit insulted that someone thought we needed to buy tinned tuna in the first place. As it has worked out it was a good decision, but that’s not the point.