Transat Day 17 - 10th December 2008 - can this be ... the Trades??

Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Wed 10 Dec 2008 12:57


 

Position: 15:28:90N 47:11:70W

 

Transat Day 17

 

It seems my whining yesterday was listened to.  During the radio sched at about 1230, we started to get some breeze from the NE, and, interestingly, so did everyone else across a 200-mile range, all at the same time.  Spooky.  After a few hours of wind in the SE, it swung round and has stayed in the ENE and has been 15-22kts.  Lovely!!  This is what we wanted!

 

The mood change is huge (well for me, anyway!) and it is so uplifting to see the miles being eaten away at each log entry. We make a log entry every 2 hours, detailing position, course, log, wind strength, direction etc, so in 2 hrs, anything over 10M is good; and anything over 13M is superb.

 

We were in visual contact with a couple of yachts just before the wind came in – “Que Sera”, a Maxi 1100 crewed by “3 accountants” (their description), and “Paula Rosa”, a Shipman 80 being delivered to Antigua.  We had a good chat with both and it was good to share the frustrations of the lack of wind and lack of fuel.

 

We had a couple of seabirds circle us for 30 mins earlier – very strange birds with a 40cm “tail” which was more like a piece of string tied underneath each of them.  Never seen anything like it.

 

Night sailing was beautiful last night – a bright moon shimmering across the sea and Nutmeg roaring along at 6-7kts.  In the day, the sea is the most intense blue which has to be seen to be believed – I’ll try and take a photo of it.

 

I cooked up a curry as an offering to the Wind Gods last night, and it seems they liked it as the breeze is still with us.  804M to go as at noon today.  We’ve started a sweepstake on arrival times, with the girls being far more optimistic than the boys!  My feeling is we will arrive at some point in the night next Tuesday night – a week away.

 

This means a 23.5-day crossing.  Wow – what an epic!  A long way off Ed & Genie’s run across in “Wandering Dream”, a Rival 38 a few years back but then, as of yesterday lunchtime, only 7 or so boats had actually made it to St Lucia after 16 days, which shows that the averages are much longer this year because of the lighter winds.  We are hanging onto the coat-tails of “Offspring”, a Bowman 48, skippered by a chap who raced against Ed & Genie in another Rival 38 when they did it, so we are very pleased to be only 70-80 miles behind such a big boat!  Tee hee…

 

Sarah should have arrived in St Lucia by now, covering in 12hrs the distance we’ve taken 5 months to do!

 

 

Hope all’s well

 

Ollie x