Well well, 5 days sailing and 500 miles. And guess what, who do we meet just next to SeaWalk? Our neighbours from pontoon 17 Offspring. After a talk on the VHF we continue our conversation directly. We were that close.

It was a shame it lasted so short since Offspring had at least ½ knot of boat speed extra. Sadly they overtook us. During the day we saw them coming toward us flying a huge yellow spinnaker and at dusk they put on beautiful twin trade wind foresails. We can’t beat that with our Genaker and our Genoa at night.

The wind has finally found us which is a very good thing. Typing this blog is getting difficult too since the swell has picked up too. Sad to say the boat speed is not good yet. The wind is at 120 degrees  and I should be flying the Genoa without the pole. I have forward placed baby-stays which prevent me from bringing the pole more backwards and I can’t trim the sail properly on the pole. We are loosing speed this way. But at night there’s only one of us and it is a two man job. I will have to wait for the watch to change.

Today was a bit boring compared to yesterday. Yannick saw a turtle today. Unfortunately everybody else missed it. So we filled the void with three sail changes and two gypes. Since I don’t have in mast furling or a genoa on a furler, everything needs to be done on the foredeck by hand. But we’re getting the hang of it.

Today the GPS is a bit more optimistic. It believes we will arrive in St Lucia on the 15^th. That is much better than yesterday when it was telling us we would spent Christmas on the Atlantic. We’ll see.