Day 11 - Crossing Lines

Amazing Grace
John and Julie
Wed 2 Dec 2009 23:59
It was a day of celebration for us!  We started with lumpy seas and a warm south easterly (southerly during the night - I thought we were in the NE trades - or are we lost??).  We had held over our 1/2 way champagne since Monday as the weather was not so good and none of us had much energy.
 
We paseed the 1000NM to go mark at 1700 UTC today - we have already sailed 1800 miles to get this far.  Strangely enough there was no line on the sea.  The winds have been light all day so we put out the fishing line as this historically has heralded a period of stronger winds and surfing to 10 kts.  Alas our tactic failed today and the 24 hour run has been more like 156 miles - still not bad for a mix of normal white sails and Parasailor!
 
Talking of Parasailors, we heard of the sad demise of Ca Canny's Parasailor last night. Aparrently something very sharp sliced through the spinnaker halyard and the whole thing ended under the boat in the middle of the night.  It seems it can be repaired but not at sea. We offered our sewing machine since they are only 20 miles away but they declined. (I had in my mind a bosun's chair slung under a line between the boats as we did a navy-style sewing machine transfer mid-atlantic!)
 
We had already crossed a minor boundary at 1600 when we sailed back onto the known world.  The known world according to Raymarine that is. You see, since the Atlantic is very dep and blue in the middle, they don't have a chart for it. In fact, we sailed off the edge of the known world somewhere south of the Canaries. I have to say the transition back on was very smooth. Nor kerb, no speed bump hardly felt a thing!
 
Calking about charts, when we passed the 1/2 way mark we had a ceremnial " Changing of the Chip" where the Western WEurope chart chip was removed from the plotter and laid to rest in the drawer and the new Caribbean chip was marched out and plugged in with absolutely no ceremony at all! 
 
We're just getting ready for the next celebration in the morning- we will have passed the 2/3 mark by 0300.  I guess everyone will stay in bed and we'll celebrate at breakfast with extra fruit on our muesli! (And 3 cups of coffee for Dan).
 
And with that, I'll sign off till tomorrow when there will be more exciting news from Amazing Grace!