Position 024:14:72N 020:02:22W

 

We are currently two and a half days into our Atlantic crossing and have covered 366 miles already. For only the second time in ARC history the organisers changed the start to allow the cruising fleets to remain in Las Palmas (Gran Canaria) for an extra 2 days. This was due to an unwelcome low pressure system that meant if we had started as planned on Sunday we would have have been battling against 35 knot head winds and a very rough sea on the first night. We took the decision to go for the delayed start on Tuesday, and have had wind behind us all the way so far. The first 24 hours was particularly windy with gusts of over 40 knots propelling us south. JJ helmed us to a new top speed of 10.6 knots surfing down some waves, and we covered a big 175 miles in the first 24 hours.

 

Things have calmed down a bit since then, but we are still surfing at 7-8 knots most of the time and the wind looks to be like this for some time to come, so we could be in for a quick crossing.

JJ, Paul, Oly and my Mum (Sheila) are settling into the rhythm on board, we are taking turns doing the cooking and mixing up the watches so that everyone gets to chat to someone new each night.

 

Amazingly we haven’t seen another boat since the early hours of this morning, considering 24 hours before there were boats everywhere you looked, It’s amazing how quickly the fleet spreads out.

I think we dived down south a bit sooner than most of fleet, although now we are heading in a more westerly direction with the wind right behind us and the Genoa poled out.

 

There is a detailed race tracker on the WCC ARC website if you want to see where we are in relation to the rest of the fleet. We can’t see it from on board but we do know that Fabiola is 60 miles ahead of us, so they are also going well.

 

We’ll try and write a blog everyday!

Tim and the Open Blue crew