Having met up with our buddy boat Suzie Too in St Lucia, we all had a few jobs to do following our respective shakedown sails. You might remember I wrote about the gremlins which seemed to have attacked our boat on the way from Nevis.

A few days later, the windlass button was fixed, it was no wonder it had shorted out - the plastic cover over the button was actually split and had no doubt been letting water in. We get a huge amount of water over the deck just about every time we sail so this was obviously at least part of the problem. Also, the winches are now fixed. When we investigated the button on the binnacle, it had completely come apart from the wires, causing an intermittent failure.  A new button is required, but as this was unavailable on island, we have had to by-pass the electrical connection as a temporary fix, to allow the winches to keep working. It seems quite strange writing sentences like that, a year ago we would have been clueless and we would have almost certainly had to call out an electrician rather than attempt to fix the problem ourselves. 

So, once we had both boats ship-shape, it was time to leave for the first real journey of the season, a 462nm, three day sail, to Kralendjik in Bonaire. The crew of both boats were very excited to be leaving, it is a new island for both of us. The diving is supposed to be the best in the Caribbean and among the best in the world, so for us that is a definite plus. There are also two other islands in the mini chain, Aruba and Curaçao, although we know very little about these as yet as the guidebook doesn't even mention them in passing. 

Wednesday morning dawned clear and bright with a good 15-20 knot following breeze. Once we got the sails set, it was time to face our first challenge - poling out the head sails. This is necessary when sailing downwind, as without the horizontal pole for stability, the sail is constantly flapping and collapsing, therefore loosing all power. Previously, when we first got the boat, we bought a 'twistle rig'. This is a bit of kit is supposedly designed to allow the two head sails to be poled out simultaneously.  Whilst in theory a good idea, in practice it involved a large chunk of solid metal swinging across the foredeck at about head height - not good. This has now been put at the very bottom of the locker probably never to be seen again. During the Atlantic crossing, 3 years ago, our alternative method of attaching both poles to the mast for stability was trialled, but with only limited success - the system seemed vastly over complicated and rather put us off using it when there was only the two of us on board. A simpler system was needed. This summer, in discussions with John at Discovery, the perfect solution was found. It is simple to rig, even with just the two of us, and also easy to control, meaning we can reef the sails for night sailing easily without having to remove the poles. 

So yesterday seemed the perfect opportunity to try the new system. A  bit of head scratching later, and much poring over the photos from Discovery, and we had our sails flying!! In addition to the poled out headsail, we also had the mainsail out on the preventer (to stop the boom from crashing about) and before knew it, we were sailing at a steady 7.5 - 8.5 knots. The waves were causing some serious rolling for the first 24 hours but once we jibed, (changed direction to go more south with the wind on the other side of the sails), it was a bit calmer. Tacking however was a long job - our first attempt took about half an hour, as we had to release the mainsail preventer and bring the sail back in board, before releasing the two down hauls attached to the pole to furl the head sail, remove the pole, jibe the boat then set the pole up again, with the two downhauls and an up haul and then, set the mainsail out on the preventer - phew!! Thankfully we only had to tack every 24 hours! Now at 4pm on day 3, we are unfortunately motoring, and have been all day, as the wind is too directly behind us and very light at 4 knots apparent, and tacking to gain necessary ground would take us miles further north than we want to go.  We did want to arrive tomorrow, (Saturday), and so between the two boats we have decided that motoring is the best idea. Whether we get the sails up again before we arrive, who knows...

 Seaduced from the aft deck, with poled out headsail. 

 A happy captain.  You might notice that John is sporting a new, very short haircut in this picture, there is a bit of a story.... The saga of John's hair all started in Antigua. Since we left the UK one of my jobs has been to cut the skippers hair and so far it has been without major incident, the odd time there have been a few bald patches round the ears, but nothing serious - until now. The first cut of the season was in Antigua. The clippers were all charged. John's hair was quite long at the time (relatively), as he had been too busy to get a trim. I started about half an hour before we had guests arriving for dinner, plenty of time, especially as half way through the clippers stopped working and no amount of fiddling made them any better - John officially had a Mohawk haircut - oops!!! Unfortunately, he had to live with it until the next day when we could borrow some clippers to finish the job, but luckily it was dark when everyone arrived and they probably wouldn't even have noticed had I not mentioned it - well I couldn't possibly not mention it could I?  So we bought new clippers. A whole set of 'men's grooming tools' according to the box. Next haircut. I get the clippers out, pick a number 2 blade guard and get to work. After the first long strip of hair is removed, it is clear I have made a mistake - I am almost down to bare skin - oops again! Turns out that the number two blade guard I used was for trimming beards, not heads, and that is why John's hair is currently so short. 

 Me enjoying the sun on the foredeck unknotting some ropes. 

  Our buddy boat Suzie Too sails off into the sunset. 

As I write this blog, I am waiting for the sound of the fishing reel spinning to let us know we have a fish - I am not overly hopeful though, it has been out all day with not a sniff of a fish, it might be frozen pizza for dinner instead!

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