16:58.632N 45:13.336W
Lotus
Sat 5 Dec 2009 13:39
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Just over 900 miles to go! Duncan and John
stayed up late last night to watch the 1000 mile to go count down on the
GPS. After much anticipation, their celebrations were a little muted,
they'd already had a can of beer at lunch time and felt that a second would be
too much. I was less excited, demonstrated by my snoring. Shortly
afterwards ominous dark clouds started to develop in the dark, before long sheet
lightening streaked across the sky lighting up the horizon some 30miles or so,
we were extremely pleased that this was a long way off as being immediately
beneath this dramatic display of the power of nature would have been
scary. As a precaution we disconnected the aerials from both radios and
despite the fact that we were pleased to have such a show put on for us we were
equally pleased when it stopped.
There was obviously atmospheric turbulence in the
area and in pitch dark with no clouds or moon to light the sea surface and give
us a view of oncoming waves and swell, we experienced a 90 degree wind
shift with gusts rising up to 30 knots then down to 10 knots. At one
point it seemed like we'd sailed right through the eye of a small depression as
the wind literally moved gradually through 360 degrees in the course of
10minutes. In such confusing conditions, heavy rain and a slight
cross sea developing, we furled the sails and motored until dawn when we were
greeted by light cloud and sunshine. We are now underway again, making 7
knots on a direct route to St Lucia.
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