Bermuda to Azores, 21st May 2010 Day 5

Knightime
Sat 22 May 2010 14:09

Bermuda to Azores, 21st May 2010 Day 5 

37:15.9N 55:28.9W

Hello Everyone, 

The main story of the day is big winds, rough seas and well reefed sails, sailing on a broad reach all day and, once again making very good progress.

The boat speed is, of course, a definite encouragement to The Knightriders for whom the only downside is soaking wet foul weather gear, which cannot be dried until we get a sunny day, and the boats motion is not exactly conducive to easy sleep. However, those are minor details, as we plot our passage to The Azores. Sometime soon, we will have sailed over 600 Nautical miles since leaving Bermuda.

Many people back home, think that keeping watch all through the night, albeit in 4 hour blocks, might be a bit onerous, but there are always unusual things to see which you could not hope to see, except in this environment.

 Last week, the last of the old moon came up just before dawn, a lovely deep orange sliver, just above the horizon and fantastically reflected all the way to the boat over a calm sea.  Without the moon showing, the stars shine astonishingly brightly and shooting stars always draw comment from the watchkeepers. The other thing which all of us seem to enjoy, is the bright luminescence of the plankton and jellyfish as they pass under and by the yacht, as if we are leaving our own little vapour trail. Yes, when it’s not raining and blowing hard, these things cheer us up as we sit in the cockpit in the dark.

There was a threat, an empty threat as it turned out, that Quentin would write the blog tonight, to bring a bit more sailing detail to the blogs. However, when it came to it, there was just a message for Fiona herself, and the message is ‘T’.  He is obviously a man of few words so, perhaps, it’s just as well he’s not doing the blog after all.

That’s all for now. With best wishes to all our families and friends,

Goodnight from

The Knightriders, The Hoff, Martin, Michael, Charlotte, Quentin and Mogul++

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