Position 19:03.170N 24:19.255W

 Sitting out here under the stars tonight I cant help but think what a small world this is. Not in the clichéd social community way but physically, geographically. As I look north towards Ursa Major I think of the distance Ursula and I have travelled already, now off the coast of Africa and barely 2000 miles from the West Indies.

Understandably for our generation, the world seems smaller than it did for previous ones with the increased affordability and availability of air travel, but when you have done the travelling yourself, seen or felt every nautical mile, met the people, and navigated the obstacles, things look quite different. Familiarity reduces scale. When you look out the window at the same mountain every morning, learn and understand its angles and topography, it seems smaller.

This is the real size. Like when you find the link that connects two parts of a town that individually you knew quite well, the whole becomes smaller than the sum of its parts. So yes, the Atlantic Ocean is huge on a square mile scale, and we will ride over one million waves on this trip, breaking it up into lat and long waypoints doesn’t make it any smaller. Breaking it up into watches, then days, does.

If we have an adequate supply of provisions and a lack of deadlines we can go anywhere we want on the planet. Tonight looking at the other planets and stars in the stellar surround and trying to grasp the space and time, our little world shrinks again. This is Cashel to St Lucia with Johnny Cash.

Now it really is a small world. Jeannot’s not happy about the yacht that has been gaining on us all night. This morning as she closes to within a mile I take the binoculars for a look. Shape is like another Beneteau but bigger. This could be Pegasus a Beneteau 50 (10 ft on us) owned by Anthony whom we met back in Portugal last month. As they come closer we communicate by radio and it is indeed Anthony and his crew. We do not mind so much being overtaken by a larger boat. Even though she is a British vessel.

Jeannot cooked us the best tomato sauce I have had in years last night. In my opinion the better it stains the better the sauce and this stuff stains. We all spotted the flying fish this morning. These ones were quite small. Maybe they were swimming birds.

Cerys out.