N25.49.0 W19.57.0

Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Tue 24 Nov 2009 04:48
Its the middle of the night and we are still cruising along nicely.  A little more slowly than before as the wind has dropped but that's good since we are all able to sleep better.
 
The sky is clear and its just amazing how many stars you can see when there are no street lights to get in the way!
 
We still see the odd boat on the horizon but they never seem to get any closer.  That's probably because we are all heading in the same direction (approximately) and the differences in boat speed are not that great. The bigger, faster boats seemed to leave us yesterday.  One went away southwards so maybe we will cross paths again.  It was an Oyster 72 and they spoke to us on the radio in between the caviar and roast quail courses (theirs not ours!).
 
This trip is about 2600 miles if you could go in a straight line.  The problem is that the trade winds are not properly set yet and so generally, we have to go a little south of the direct course to get the best of them.  The traditional wisdom is to "go south till the butter melts and then turn right"  however, in the days of the refrigerator this does not work.  Happily we now have GPS and you can enter the point where most peoples butter melts into it and go there instead!  Anyway, what that means is that we have done about 300 miles in the 33 hours we have been on the go and the direct (great circle) route to St Lucia leaves us 2400 miles to go.  We will continue heading south west ish today to keep in the decent winds.  There is talk of a depression to the north next week that will affect the pattern of winds somewhat and we want to be away from that influence as much as possible.
 
As I write,Dan is at the helm watching how Ray, the auto pilot, does his stuff. Ray is a bit of a whiner but well worth putting up with since it means we have much less work to do!  We were passed by that Oyster 72 yesterday - they cost well over £1m - and they were hand steering - you can tell times were hard for them! 
 
On Sunday night we feasted on smoked salmon salad. Alan from Ca Canny brought it all the way from the USA for us as a present - he also bought us dinner on Saturday night! What a nice man!  You can get smoked salmon by Spence and Company from Publix so you can see what we were eating too!  We had a great dinner last night of chicken in montreal dressing (Randy's favorite) with salad.  Note that everything at the moment is with salad since we have to eat the fresh veggies before they rot!  We have laid in 45 oranges and about 45 apples, bananas and kiwi fruit so there's little chance of the crew getting scurvy.
 
We made water yesterday so that was a relief and we will pump it into the main tank later.  We all had showers so the 'ambiance'  is  nice and fresh although Dan has a pretty fancy smelling box of baby wipes.  I guess he must have got them in Beverly Hills or somewhere. 
 
I think I have possibly rambled enough for now so I will bid you all farewell. It will soon be time for a bit of fishing so check in again soon for the fishing report!