Half way there

Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Mon 28 Nov 2011 19:43
16:44.9N 037:26.9W  1505 miles covered
 
At 1400 GMT we passed half way, with Ian proudly at the helm.  We will be having Pina Coladas at dinner to celebrate.
 
I say 1400 GMT because we are still using GMT onboard even though we are 37 degrees west (about two and a half time zones) of Greenwich.  Sticking with GMT means is that it is still light at 7:30, which gives us an extra two hours of daylight in the evening, when everyone is up and around.  It means that dawn does not come until about 8:30 but that is in the middle of Andrea's morning watch and the rest of us are in bed asleep after our night watches.
 
We will have to have shifted our clocks by 4 hours when we get to St Lucia, so we will probably shift just two hours en route (keeping our own "daylight saving" going) and then shift two hours on arrival in St Lucia.
 
Our first change is tomorrow, which means that Estella will get a 25 hour long birthday!
 
We have been gradually pushing south as well as west to try and find better wind.  Anastasia does not go very fast downwind until the wind is at 20 knots, so it is quite frustrating to be in 18 knots most of the time.  I am now thinking that we will cut down to the latitude of St Lucia sooner than planned and then go west.  Andrea thinks this is about as sensible as taking a detour through a housing estate to avoid an accident on the motorway. 
 
There were some birds flying around the boat for about half an hour.  They looked like egrets, but they are 700 miles from the nearest land (the Cape Verde islands).