Position 1200 UTC +0200hrs 5th December  18:16.00 N 44:05.00 W 

 

Overnight was a bit more restful for everyone with mainly light winds but enough to fill the sails for most of the time.  during the latter part of the night however, the wind veered and then dropped and the heavens opened with a deluge of rain.  Anthony got rather wet.  We put the engine on for a few hours as the wind drop still left a swell that rocked the boat badly....again.  It was cloudy for most of the morning but the rain soon stopped.

 

Jennie was given a book of party games which were played during the morning.  Around noon there were 2 significant happenings.  We crossed the 1,000 miles to go mark and we caught a lucky fish.  You may well ask why its lucky if it ended up on our line.  Well it fought hard as we tried to reel it in and once on deck it showed great spirit in getting off the hook and wriggling to try and escape.  We recognised it’s spirit and put it back.

 

For some time now, we’ve used a rig with the main on one side of the boat and the jib poled out on the other.  At various times we’ve also hoisted the storm jib on an inner forestay and there have been constructive discussions about whether or not this is beneficial.  We took a series of readings and our product performance director has run the data through her computer analysis programme and concluded that there is a benefit of 0.02 of a knot.  We all brace ourselves for the g force when its hoisted now.

 

Some may be interested in what life aboard is like.  Well we operate a watch system with 4 hourly watches during the day and 3 hour watches at night.  All 4 of us are doing this (Richie, Jennie, Antony and Phil)  so that someone is always on hand to keep a lookout, effect a course change or trim sails but if anything significant is needed, assistance from one of the off watch crew is needed.  Apart from that, it’s just as you may experience at home with eating, sleeping, cleaning and caring for the boat, although doing some of these when moving around or heeled over is a bit more challenging.

 

We are all still in good spirits although having passed the 1,000 miles to go mark are watching more closely our progress towards the fi  nish whilst still looking forward to the next weeks sailing.