We had some dolphins come play in our bow wave around midday but the sea is providing far bigger and more powerful waves than we can ever produce.

 

The waypoint "Turn Here" has been abandoned and replaced with "Turn Here Instead" the wind has decided we must stay north for longer. Will see shortly what the forecast brings.

Yesterdays emails showed us how we had slipped in the fleet. Not too bothered as every day we've had little bumps and bruises and its not worth more of the same on your holidays especially with the alarming amount of wear and tear on rope. Lancelot another 40.7 is doing very well. This is a English boat chartered by a bunch of Irish lads. We arrived to the pontoon one day to find it covered in tricolours. They gave us a huge flag itching to have as many flying as possible. Get this, none of them have sailed. They are a group of mountaineers who have done lots of mad stuff like hanging from peaks in Alaska. One calm weekend in the UK and one bumpy sail in Dublin and then off on a transatlantic. Very obviously a tough bunch of adventurers and proving the point. My hats off to them.

 

Movie night was abandoned again last night too. Sound was not able to compete with the noise of sailing. Beoga is only about 1cm thick and the wind, waves, slapping and creaking all more than we realised I suppose. We sat in the moonlit cockpit chatting and eating addictive spanish sweets instead.

Cormac is tuning (having rebuilt) Lara's guitar that was heaved on board in a hurry the day we left. Its seen some spills since. The others are reading in cabins and on deck. Not much fuss over trim but the sun is shining and we just had a mighty salad for lunch.

 

Standby Standby, messages from Cormac below:

 

Hello all, Cormac here.

We've had good winds from the north east since leaving Las Palmas on Sunday, the lowest being 10kts and the highest being 24kts. The sun has shone constantly and our daily decisions extend to what sail configuration we will use, what we'll have for lunch and dinner and whether we have enough sunscreen on or not. Our days go by very easily with a lot of lounging about reading books and chatting. At night, our watch patterns kick in as we each take on 2 hour watches. These watches are far from tiring or boring and as our body clocks have now adjusted to sleep, wake, sleep etc, it becomes easier and easier to get up in the middle of the night (the fact that we don't have work to go to the next morning also helps). Last night was glorious. Gibbous moon, spinnaker and full main sail up, bombing along at up to 11kts with phosperesence (like fire-flies in the water) off the stern and my ipod blaring in my ears ........ my idea of heaven.

The mood on board is great with everyone happy. It feels like an adventure and there is no nervousness from anyone as the days are warm and sunny and are dissipating  the Irish winter out of us all .........what rain ??

Joan sends her love to all.

Cormac