14:56.00N 43:28.00W

This evening my dinner had been alive an hour before I ate it. Fresher than fresh. Having caught four large  Mahi Mahi (Dorado) it was time for Ian to hand over to Jane who landed a 2 Kilo beauty at about  6pm this evening. She left it a bit late in the day, we had all resigned ourselves to getting the corned beef out but she came up with the goods in the nick of time.

Noticing that these blogs are getting a bit fishy I will turn to another subject, that of sailing itself.  After sailing for thirteen days generally a SW direction we are now on the same latitude as St Lucia , 14 degrees North. This means that we really do have to head due west 270 degrees. The trade winds blow almost exactly from east to the west so they are now directly behind us. That sounds pretty good doesn’t it.  For our non yachtie  follower this is called “downwind sailing”. Downwind sailing can be done in a number of different ways depending of the conditions and the equipment you have available and can be very challenging. We have tried most of the downwind sail plans today.

Our  usual method of downwind sailing is the poled out Genoa method. This involves holding our large Genoa, that’s the large head sail, out at a right angle to the boat with a 5metre  aluminium pole. This generally works very well for us . It does require reasonable strength wind and is not as fast as using two sails. This morning the winds were light and progress was a bit slow. For the first time we tried Goose Winging or as American Yachtsmen call it Wing on Wing. This is a pure downwind sailing method which means using two large sails out on opposite sides of the boat .We did this for an hour or so. It’s short fall is that it is a bit unstable and requires a reasonably strong and steady wind which we didn’t have for long. The third attempt was to get out the Cruising Chute (see picture below). The Cruising Chute is a magnificent huge, red , white and blue sail for light winds. It has only been out it’s bag once in the nine months that I have owned Capisce and judging by it’s condition only once or twice in the previous sixteen years. The Cruising Chute sometimes called an Asymmetric Spinnaker takes a bit of handling. At least two strong boys that would be Ian and me. It does literally come in a bag. A bag with lots of ropes and pulleys in it but no instructions. We spent an exhilarating couple of hours pulling it up, changing our minds about how to fly it, pulling it down, then up again  etc. “Kite Flying for Big Boys”

Eventually at 1530 hrs the wind virtually disappeared altogether and we reluctantly turned the engine on. We have now been motoring for twelve hours which is always far less pleasurable and often slower than sailing. This is a little disappointing as I was very pleased at how little motoring and how little diesel we had used, less than twenty hours. The weather information I have suggests that the lack of wind may well continue for another couple of days. It is however 32 degrees and sunny and St Lucia is only 900 miles away.

From Tony (Skipper)

Cheers for now.   Tony (Skipper)