14:04.14N  52:01.25W

 

OK, so it’s a race. We are doing well enough to warrant getting involved now. Yachts race with a handicap rating as some yachts are bigger, lighter, faster than others by design, so to make it interesting every yacht has a handicap based on their length, weight, sail area etc.  As we are now first in the multihulls it is now officially a race. There are two catamarans ahead, but they are both bigger than us and one is substantially lighter, so they are supposed to be in front.  Unfortunately this new development has coincided with a drop in wind which has made today painfully slow compared with recent days, but it should have been slower for the other yachts as well.  As we sit here bobbing in a large swell with little wind to drive us through the water as purposefully as we would like, a level playing field it is not! To make the most of not enough wind we now have three sails out which is a first and it is working quite well. We have two foresails out, one on each side, and the main sail. We even discussed the ‘S’ word today.

 

Still no fish, but we did catch another weevil in the flour after posting yesterday’s blog, another small victory.

 

Frances went to the hairdressers today for ‘a colour’, apparently a few stray grey ones have come through since we went sailing in May. All sorted now though and another little emergency averted mid ocean.

 

The water is gradually warming up and is now a steady 28.8 degrees which is warmer than most swimming pools; and most certainly the one in Bolton. We are all looking forward to our first swim when we get there and if we get becalmed completely out here some of us will be leaping in. We are now only 530 miles from St Lucia, what could possibly go wrong?  The nearest landfall is now Barbados at only 450 miles and we have enough fuel to motor double that. The ‘what if’ scenarios still go through my mind on a daily basis, but we do seem to have a back up plan for most eventualities.  As we get nearer to the end of the crossing though we need to keep complacency at bay, but never before has being 530 miles offshore in a small sailboat seemed so normal.  Only a few weeks ago a 530 miles passage would have seemed like a major undertaking and now it’s just the ‘run in’.