Farewell to the Caribbean
Chiscos - Atlantic Cruise
John Simpson
Sun 6 May 2012 09:37
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19:53.857n 065:22.938w After some final preparations and a couple of beers
(well we had to say goodbye to the Caribbean in style!) we were more than ready
for our 846NM trip to Bermuda. As forecast there was very little
wind: 2-4kts, but still we managed to sail/drift across the start
line at 12noon yesterday. With the skipper on his trumpet
and our parasailor hanging limply in the air we took ten minutes
to finally cross the line, we were off! Half an hour later
we had managed to sail half a nautical mile and we were resigned to
put the engine on. Luckily soon after we were out of the
channel there was enough wind to sail.
So after our first and rather bumpy night we
are starting to get into a bit of a routine. We quickly
developed a love-hate relationship with our newly fitted AIS receiver. The
skipper spent all of yesterday afternoon trying to work out
how 'Halo' (our neighbours in Nanny Cay) were managing
to sail 1 whole knot faster than us, we thought they must be motoring
but skipper Mike assured us they weren't...Their lead was rapidly
increasing so there was lots of sail trimming and discussion about how to
get every last knot out of Chiscos and of course anything we did only
reduced our speed! Oh well, only 750 miles to go so plenty of time to make
up for it. We do keep trying to remind ourselves that it's
not a race - who says we're competitive?!
We've just about been going 24 hours so not too
much has happened so far. We did briefly see a small pod of whales
yesterday and we heard on the radio net that one boat saw a water
spout heading for them - luckily
it passed 300 metres away. We have our fishing line out so expect
reports of dorado the size of Chiscos any minute now. We will be sure to
get photo evidence for any skeptics out there!
Mikaela
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