Keoma - 26 November
Dearloves
Sat 26 Nov 2005 22:31
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Last night we kept the big spinnaker flying all
night, for the first time, with the result that we covered nearly 200 miles in
the last 24 hours. Helming was a joy today, with surfing waves coming in
from behind and the wind on the beam. Again we had long periods when the
speedometer remained above 9 knots, occasionally reaching 11 or 12 knots, in
winds between 12 and 22 knots.
 Hagrid's back
It was Nick's turn to have his hair done by
Pip:
 Nick and Amanda did a brilliant wind-up on Pip,
calling "fish" to get everyone up on deck in order to land a new catch.
Charlie got Pip ready with the net to pick up the fish, she lent over the
back of the boat with it and Nick put Pip's toy dolphin in the net. She
had to think about it for a while before she saw the funny side.
 We also had two real fish that got away before we
managed to reel them in, although they did not take our tackle this
time.
We spoke to Stewart Oliver, on Azure, on the VHF
radio this morning. After over 600 miles, these two Haven Ports Yacht Club
boats (Azure and us) are within 15 miles of each other. We have not seen
any other boats today other than a ship this evening.
 Alice writing her diary
Alice has been writing a diary to submit in the ARC
competition for children's logs - the prize is a meal for the whole crew, so we
have been encouraging her to do a good job! She seems to have conquered
her sea sickness, which is good news.
As darkness fell this evening we took the spinnaker
down and unfurled the genoa, in anticipation of the wind moving to SSW, as
forecast. Two hours later the wind has already changed from an Easterly to
ESE. It is likely that by morning we will be on a fine reach. We are
currently around 150 miles north of the northernmost of the Cape Verde Islands,
heading 240 degrees. This is slightly further south than we would normally
have gone, however the trade winds, which are currently ceased, are
forecast to fill in from 16 degrees North next
Tuesday.
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