Hi everyone!

What a lovely time we have had in Ponta Delgada. The week long (+ a bit) rest was great and enabled us to make some repairs (not much needed) and rest and of course enjoy some beers with some new friends! In particular the crew of Chimera Graham and Mike and their families, Brendan from Storna Hoga and his wife and 2 daughters, Alistair on Sundance Eric on Sea Monster and David on Ventura and loads more! Peter Wheatley on Henry was fabulous and helped us all with advice and terrific engineering or electronic skills.

The hospitality of the Clube Navale PD was great and very generous and the tour of Furnas and the tea plantations was outstanding. All in all a great week!

But it is good to be back at sea! The start was very light and very interesting – with a lot of Class 1 going west, most of class 2 going east and Class 4 mainly going east. I had always wanted to go west – the wind will come in over the next few days from the west. But it looked like it may be light and variable going west and better pressure going east.

Well in fact going west has been superb! We had a gentle run under spinnaker to the West point of San Miguel (pointa Ferraria) and then Robert did a brilliant drop and stow of spinny and removal of the anti wrap and setting of the genoa. All stress free and as fast as if he had been sailing with Bill and I on the out leg! It was bit light to begin with off the west end – but probably only for an hour and we rarely fell below 3kts boat speed. Soon after the wind has filled in and as I write (22.15 BST) we have about 15 knots SE and are on a very broad reach at boat speed of 6.8kts and VMG of over 7! La Promesse (racing machine Class 1 and winner of the out leg) passed us about 2 hours ago – and she started some 30 minutes AHEAD of us! She went west as well but headed for Brazil for perhaps a little too long.

We have just been called by Pinta – another fast machine – and she will overhaul us soon.

So we are settling in. All feels good but the first 24 / 48 hours are likely to be tiring!

Robert is off watch and asleep – or trying to sleep. He is on good form! Bill flies back tomorrow having been fabulous on the way out and helped massively with jobs that needed to be done in PD. Safe travels home Bill and THANK YOU!

Time to check the sail trim!

Sleep well all! Wake up Anne in Aus!

Tim and Robert