Ascension Northwards - Day Six 03 01.546S 026 54.002W
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Sat 19 Apr 2014 16:23
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Having been all geared up with 'water pistols' at the ready to repel the family of feathered boarders (or at least get them to sleep where we wanted them to), they didn't return for their 3rd night with us. It was pleasing in that we didn't have to worry about the mess and any damage (the other night one took a lot of persuasion not to sleep on one of the GPS aerials), but a little sad as it was sort of nice to be adopted by the locals. Either the navigator among them failed to find us or perhaps we had traveled too far north and out of their normal range. And we did travel quite a way yesterday. It was a cracking sail and our noon-to-noon run was 164.8 miles, the best for a long time. The winds were still relatively light, but with the combination of a slight sea and the momentum she built up, the speeds were around 7kts most of the day, reaching 8.1kts on several occasions. We were expecting the winds to drop so were pleasantly surprised that they didn't. The night was another clear one with stars filling the sky before the moon came up.
This morning we experienced our first squall since returning to he tropics. Luckily it was short lived (only 10 minutes) and it was easy to see it coming so we could reduce sail in time. The wind shot up to 26kts and the rain came down. The skies then quickly cleared and the sun came out and stayed out. We're expecting the winds to drop tomorrow as we get ever closer to the Equator and the ITCZ, and with that we're expecting more squalls.
