Newsletter  4:   10 December 2007 

Day:                                                               2

Position:                                                       25:31.855N  20:20.461W 

Approx Miles from San Sebastion:              227 

Approx Miles to go to Road Town:              2591

Note:  All times are GMT time, and will be for the whole trip.

Hello Friends, and Supporters,

Sorry for the wrong date and switched around mileages above, in yesterday's email. It must have reflected how dis-orientated I felt!

AS you can see a better day, with about 160 miles sailed in the 24 hrs to midday on the 10th. Still no great shakes and somehow I was expecting better. The boat seemed to be going faster than the 6.2 knots the day averages out at! For probably half the day the wind has been in tthe 15-20 knot range with Solone's speed indicator showing 8-12 knots! Maybe I am being too optimistic and forgettiing the light wind patches I had! Anyway the GPS doesn't lie, so I'll have to just check through the calculations again.

Overall I am feeling a lot more 'settled in' now, and the wind and sunny weather probably has helped a bit too. The wind has remained North East, giving me a braod reach / run down to the 20N, 30W waypoint I am heading for, before I turn sharp west and head for the caribbean proper. I passed a yacht today that was already on the wrest route...a shorter one in distance, but I have a feeling they will get stopeed in the low wind area of the high pressure. We will see!

I ship passed close by this morning....all safe and I had been alerted by my Activ Echo radar detector. So I am not ALL alone out here. On aloneness, I was just thinking that if I don't call Ruth on my satphone until I get to Tortola, I would have not spoken to anyone for around 3 weeks!!  Never done that before! Wonder what it feels like?

Solone is going well, no further problems come up since the last newsletter. Holding thumbs.

I had to run the engine for 90 mins yestersday. This to charge the batteries as the daylight hours are just not enough for the solar panels. Also I have been a bit 'lazy' letting the autopilot do 95% of the steering.

Sleep last night had the resemblance of a routine....roughly sleeping for an hour, then up for 10-15 mins, then back to sleep. Well not quite as pleasant as that....I had to shake out a reef when the wind lightened, an dthen around midnight put one back in. For those that don't know, this means making the sail smaller if the wind increases, or returning it to full size when the wind strength drops. Reducing bthe sail size  takes me about 1o mins if all goes well!! Its all about planning and then executing correctly! Hmmm...!

I even felt like cooking today, so have made a potato salad.... yes the cooking limited to boiling potatoes!!  It will get more sophisticated as days move on!

I finished reading my book titled  "The Kit Runner"...very hard hitting and sad book about Afghanistan and how it disruupted human lives. Lots of good human stuff, and stuff that makes you think about values, and ho lucky we are!

That's about it for toady  

Till tomorrow.....take care

Howard