15:40.46 N 53:33.77 W
California Blue
Mark Bashforth / Jayson Bashforth
Sun 9 Dec 2007 21:41
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Blog nr.14 from California Blue - Reflections
from the teenagers onboard 9/12-07
Hello Everyone,
It's Sunday and today the sun did shine all day.
The squalls seemed to have passed us for the moment. Except of course when we
raise our Parasailor and then the squalls come after at once. A coincidence I
know, but I am starting to think that some type of magnetic properties have been
sewn into the Parasailor thereby attracting squalls at an uncanny pace. Today
for example we raised the Parasailor 2 times and each time we raised it a squall
appeared within 30 minutes. As soon as we took it down we didn't see a squall
for the rest of the day!
The early morning watches were very nice. Decent
winds, a little rain but very comfortable. Our navigation lights continued to
misbehave with the port side deck light (red) turning itself on and off at will.
The night was very black - no moon left now but millions of starts and
impressive constellations to look at.
In addition to trying our best to sail with limited
wind at times and playing with sails for most of the day, we also fished - still
nothing but Vic swears he had a big one that got away at the last minute. Yeah
right! Seems like everyone has caught fish but us. We have however
collected an impressive number of flying fish onboard.
Jayson and I refilled the diesel tanks with
the turtle pack (that big ugly orange bladder on the aft deck) which holds an
extra 500 litres of fuel, while the boys did homework and read.
California Blue was revisited by a small pod
(to be honest I have no idea how many make a pod) of dolphins again this
afternoon. They seem to love our boat. I have compared our dolphin sightings
with other boats on the VHF and we seem to have a very high occurrence of
running into them. It must be the music. Lots of new great pictures taken from
our bow spirit that you have to see.
We had a fair of VHF chatter with several boats in
the area and tonight we will be participating in a Pub Quiz at 21:00. So the
social program leading up to our arrival in St. Lucia is underway. In fact the
social aspect of this event is one of the big appeals and I wish we had had more
time leading up to the ARC to meet more participants before the
start.
Enjoying a beautiful sunset right now as we get
ready to pass another ARC participant :).
Hope you enjoy today's pictures!
Dinner was bratwurst and beans by the way. We are
slumming it now till we hit the restaurants in St. Lucia.
That's all for now. More tomorrow.
Take care,
Mark and the crew from California Blue
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