Greetings from Mid Atlantic
Navillus
Mon 3 Dec 2007 17:59
Day 7
We can hear a sigh of relief from here - the boys have managed to figure out
how to work the blog!! Yes, after 7 days of sailing,we have finally managed
to get ourselves together enough to send out an update of life aboard
Navillus.
We have sailed 1250miles and are currently about 2 days off the halfway mark
having covered an average of 170NM each day toward St Lucia. Weather today
is perfect sailing weather - SE wind F5 giving us up to 9 knots boat speed
directly toward St Lucia, bright sunshine and mid to high 20's. Crew are
beginning to notice the lack of air condition aboard the Navillus,while
skipper is genuinely concerned about the crew actually puting ON weight
during the voyage - it wasn't supposed to be this way! Not to worry, as the
last of bananas seeped away this morning!
Most days, we are in visual range of between 2 and 6 other boats (obviously
in the highly competitive racing classes!) and receive a lot of detailed
information daily on weather, positions and other stuff from the ARC office.
At night, visual contact can be a bit easier with the nav lights. Very
little other traffic on the water at this stage, since we mover beyond 400M
west of Africa.
Our routine - we call it a routine, technically it is coordinated chaos -
has us on a rotating watch schedule, with 2 shared shifts at afternoon and
middle of the night. It is working well and ensures than no one person is
on at the same time each day, so a bit of variety. Apart from sailing,
navigation, maintenance, communication on position with ARC and
cooking/cleaning are the main tasks, all of which are shared equally -
Navillus is a democracy of course!!
Weather and nav are interesting. Given the distances, 1 degree is a
significant distance at the other end and where we are at the moment,
straight lines east to west are bent up to the north quite a bit so our
logic of direction is abit skewed. Weather has been very much in line with
forecast ( mostly ENE - NE - E) but interesting under the clouds where wind
speeds pick up considerably.
We have been keeping an eye on the weather also at home, and hope that the
worst of whats shown on the charts will pass you all without harm. At the
moment, we are on schedule and hope to be in St Lucia in 9 - 10 days.
Having gotten the hang of this blogging thing, we will try to send off an
update every one or two days.
Brian, Mikie Bill & Peadar