19:22N  23:00W

After some shifty overnight winds, the breeze settled firmly into the Easterly sector by dawn, allowing a full day under spinnaker (after some teething problems with the pole tripping line) with boat speeds up to 10.5 knots. Saw a turtle, loads of flying fish and my favourite to date, a red-billed tropicbird.

174 miles covered today, just 185 to run to Mindelo. We will make the call tomorrow lunchtime on whether to attempt to enter in the dark or heave to offshore tomorrow night and go in first thing on Friday.

Richard and Julie