17:04.23 N 48:20.70 W
California Blue
Mark Bashforth / Jayson Bashforth
Fri 7 Dec 2007 20:33
|
Blog nr.12 from California Blue - 760 nm to go
and more dolphins! 7/12-07
Hello Everyone,
Today is our 12th day at sea. We have approximately
760 nm left to St. Lucia.
In the last 24 hours we sailed 170 nm so we are
keeping our 7 knot per hour average.
The weather has been warm - about 28c
degrees put very wet and rainy.
Our current heading is 270 T degrees (due
west) and we are in search of wind en route to Rodney Bay. At present there
isn't much wind in the area due to all the squall activity but we are hoping to
find some soon!
In fact until yesterday we had hardly seen winds
over 15 knots. That all changed when we hit squall city and spend more time
putting up and taking down our Parasailor than actually flying it. We had a
repeat performance of the same today but with larger and more intense squalls.
The most recent squall lasted over 1 hour and had wind speeds of up to 30 knots.
We were well prepared for this and had taken down our Parasailor and already had
up reefed main and genoa. Even with reefed sails we managed to reach speeds up
to 10 knots.
We understand from our expert weather forecaster
Chris Tibbs that there are many squally and unstable areas
currently affecting the ARC fleet at the moment - some of the boats have
damaged their booms and rigging as a result of more intense squalls than we have
experienced. So we remain thankful and ever vigilant.
Between sailing and squalls we found time to play
poker, read, do our routine tasks onboard and just hang out. Elliott has started
on book number two and Spencer well into his second Norwegian book.
Tomorrow is math and journal day.
Just before dinner tonight (shrimp curry) we were
greeted and entertained yet again by a pod of dolphins. These ones seems a
little bigger than the first ones we saw when we sailed from Gran
Canaria. They played about for an hour and then let us get on our
way.
Attached are some pics of the squalls from today,
dolphins and just hanging about time.
Thanks again for all your emails. Please keep them
coming.
Take care,
Mark and the crew of California Blue
|
