Day 11 - A quiet night

Juniper
John and Sally
Thu 3 Dec 2009 12:05
18:59.881N 46:50.405W
 
A loss of wind during the late afternoon and overnight made for a quiet night, albeit frustrating re our schedule and nearest boats ( not that we are competitive!! ). Unfortunately when the sea god's switch off the wind they have yet, after all these years, found a way to switch off the sea state. Therefore for the first few hours (9 actually  ) you have a disproportionate sea and you roll even more. Eventuall it evens out and now - 1145 GMT - we are back with 10-15 kts and the gennaker up making 6.5 kts SOG. Straight at St Lucia still. If you read blog day 2/3 this was the lull I was concerned about.
 
On our mileage we are particularly please with our non value added miles. The organisers take your lattitude and longitude each day which calculates the actual miles gone and then they take your latest position in relation to the direct route to St Lucia and declare how many miles you have to the finish ( 850 ish at the moment). If, therefore you sail south to make use of the best breeze angle you may travel 200 miles but your distance to finish DTF is not going to reduce much because of the lack of west progress. Over the last few days we have only deviated by about 5 miles in a total of 372. This was the essence of our strategy.
 
Guy cooked his first meal last night without the help of M+S tins and was excellent. Our stores are doing well with little veg wastage, eggs lasting (bacon and eggs this am in fact) and fruit all excellent. Will be having the melon from the anchor locker today. Probably arrive with meat still in the freezer.
 
All in all satisfactory progress...
 
Computer says - 1034 on the 9th - but who knows.
 
John, Jonathan, Guy, David