Latitude 11 54.362N ; longitude 58 14.898W Tuesday 20 December 2022, day 19 at sea

A hoy shipmates! And welcome to our next instalment of BA2 the Caribbean! Well, what a difference a day makes! Things are looking up here, the wind steadied about 16.00 GMT yesterday, the sky cleared, the sea flattened :) and we saw blue sky for what feels like the first time in days! We shook out reef no. 2 in main and genoa, and what’s more no one was called from their slumbers over night to put a reef back in…. Good sleep was had by all! And…. the stars were out in force! What’s more the morning has dawned bright and sunny, there’s a lovely wind so we’re cracking along at 5 knots through the water, plus our lovely North Equatorial Current at 1 to 1.5 knots :) and we’re cruising along our Rhum line course ….. what’s not to love?

We ran 124 nm over the last 24 hours through the water, 153nm GPS! Got to love the current!  Wow, we have as of now, 195nm (ish) to go to our new way point (south tip of Grenada!)….  and yes, you have deduced right, the decision has been made! We are going to Port Louis, Grenada! At some point in the night the skipper deleted the divider line that we set when we left Cape Verde from the boat to Barbados ( now less then 100nm!) and set it from the boat to Grenada….. ! We have taken some advice on the piracy issue  (thank you Martin Sharp, Steve Roche) we also emailed the Grenadian Coast Guard, although yet to hear back from them? But, we think we have assessed the risks and taken the right approach? Time will tell. All being well we could be in in a couple of days?

We spend a lot of time on the boat looking up! At the sails, the rigging, the wind vane, the sky, the clouds, the stars, the sun, the moon (when it’s there) ! It’s great neck exercise and a complete antidote to sitting for hours on a computer and the repetitive strain injury that can cause - trust me I know! The sky provides a fabulous view night and day! Cloud watching could be our new favourite pass time, trying to guess the weather they bring…. and seeing pictures in them ;). In the UK we used to sit cozily in our hot tub at night and look at the stars, and say we had the best view in the world! Now we get to sit in a warm cockpit, look up and enjoy the stars undisturbed by light pollution through out our night watches…. It does make you a bit reflective. It makes you think about the distance we’ve covered on the boat, the size of the world and the heavens above and the fact that in a few days ‘dark and stormy’ will be a choice on a cocktail menu….. not a squally night putting in and shaking out reefs. We are very glad to be here. We will miss this when we get back to land!

Alpha Whiskey 

Yours aye