Today was the day.......
Sequentia
Sat 2 Dec 2017 02:19
.........we crossed the half way mark, 1350 Nautical Miles. We also crossed from the 17th to 16th degrees latitude. And it's December 1st and Santa is waiting for us with rum punch in St.Lucia. We have been 12 days at sea. Today was also the day we lost a fair bit of ground to the other boats since we entered the trade winds. We made a bit of a gamble to stay north of the rest and sail on a direct course to St. Lucia. The benefit has been to enjoy a better position day for day as the others have been sacrificing miles going south instead of west. We gave it all away as we had lighter winds (8-12 knots) vs them (13-17 knots) yesterday. We also see lighter winds a couple of days ahead, so we have used today and tonight to edge down a bit more south, to avoid it, and pick up a new course to St.Lucia tomorrow. We expect to slide down a bit more on the ranking before (hopefully) making ground again the lat week. We have been very much alone up north apart from sailing together with Tiffin one day and night and the same with Ellen. A Norwegian and Swedish boat maybe missing the Scandinavian winter and trying to keep cool for as long as possible. It's getting warmer. The sea temperature is now 26,5 degrees and during the day we have started to take down the spray hood. The nights are filled with a nice warm breeze. Since entering the trade winds, the days are much the same. You know what to expect when you wake up. Wind from behind and sails in the same position as when you went to bed. The moon has been building night by night and is almost full. It's amazing how bright the sea becomes. Apart from seeing the breathing of some whales yesterday, we haven't seen much life. The dolphins seems to have been replaced with a billion flying fish, which we have had several on deck and Adi had one flying into him the other night on his watch. I think the fish knows we are still well supplied in our fridge and freezer as every time we put out a line it comes back in a mess......! From a sailing point of view the genaker gives a bit of a buzz. It's got a lot of power, but it's delicate and requires a lot of attention. We have been close to getting it furled up around the forestay several times. Getting it up and down has been the highlight of the day. It's a 30 second make it or break it activity which is giving our coordination and team work skills a challenge. We seem to be improving as lees and less falls in the water. We have been eating very well. Ben and I start the day with a gourmet porridge, while Adi is sticking to his bananas, which he has now finished. Our plums, apples, grapefruit, mango and pineapple are still perfect, so he has got plenty of alternatives. It's now tradewinds all the way to St.Lucia, unless we hit some doldrums, and we are slowly starting to look at our ETA which will get firmer and firmer for each day. We expect another 8-9 days to go. Photos to follow! |