As I left you last time we were just about to round the Inflatable mark off Barbuda. This marks a bit of a milestone for me as for those that know the story of my C600 attempt 5 years ago this was the mark that my fellow sailors on the other watch managed to miss when I was off watch and then had a crisis of conscious 2 hours afterwards on the downwind leg.  Net 4hrs after I left them with about 20mins to the mark rounding we were tacking back upwind. I’ve been trying not to relive that horror story of a sailing school which was not only unable to race a boat but completely unsafe as well - thankfully it’s now out of business. I did vow the next time I did C600 it would be on a safe and well prepared boat with folks that know how to sail …. I could not have chosen better than Purple Mist and Claire for my second attempt. 

So far we’ve had no breakages however we have lost the 3rd reef line in the main. We shouldn’t really need it and maybe it’s Purple Mists way of just shedding the extra windage. This line was evicted from its normal clutch when we set up reefing from the cockpit for reef 1. It then had a temporary home in the spinnaker clutch that was vacated in spinnaker gate. That clutch is now back in use so it was tied at the mast. However it got a bit tangled and in untangling it m the stopper knot came out.  The windage on ropes is surprisingly high and in a 30kt squall it was enough to grab it and whisk it out the boom and dump the end  overboard. We retrieved it but there is no way to rethread through the boom. 

We had a lovely sunrise at St Kitts and then started the long beat to get round St Barths. 
We have done ok and have passed a couple of boats on the beat. The sea is completely full of weed …and not the type offered to us by a dodgy gentleman in Bequia. Seaweed comes in clumps and strings and clings to the rudder and keel slowing us down. Every 15 mins or so we have to round up and stop for it to fall off. It