Hello Mother 14:20.934N 54:39.34W

Shaya Moya
Don & Susan Smyth
Wed 8 Dec 2010 20:53

Feel free to join in with the chorus.

 

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Hello Mother, Hello Father, we are nearing South Grenada, its still raining and it’s cloudy      and this bloody crew are rude and rather rowdy.

 The yacht is leaking, no ones speaking, food is lousy, feeling drowsy, grog is rationed, Bristol fashioned and the "cat o nine" is regu'larly actioned.

 

Take me home oh mudda fadda, take me home from South Grenada, take me from this yacht that’s dark, I may get eaten by a shark

 

My bunk is lumpy and I’m grumpy, floors are creaking, roof is leaking, toilets stinking and I’m thinking,    that I’m living with the constant fear of sinking!

 

Take me home oh mudda fadda, take me home from South Grenada, take me from this yacht that’s dark, I may get eaten by a shark.

 

Just a minute, it’s stopped raining, Reece is fishing, yacht is planing,

Someone’s cooking, I feel better, Mudda Fadda kindly disregard this letter.

 

 

You may sense there is a mood of frivolity aboard Shaya Moya today. We have just 380 miles to run and  current performance should enable us to make Friday night’s happy hour at the nearest bar we can find in Rodney Bay marina.

We ran out of beer last night so the next 48 hours could be taxing. I must confess to already hallucinating about how good that first real cold one is going to taste.

The crews workload now is greatly diminished, having had no need to change the rig in the last 24 hours from its current set up of poled out genoa on the starboard side and boom fixed with a gybe preventer on starboard tack.

Goose winging into the sunset.                                                                        Large swell helping us surf along.

 

The autopilot is set to wind vane steering which keeps us on a dead run (running with the wind).

Although the wind direction is backing and veering through 20 degrees we are keeping a reasonable track towards our destination. The wind strength has remained fairly constant and we are maintaining an average of 8.5 knots and regularly hitting 12 knots in the gusts. The swell height has increased to an average of well over 10m and regularly 15m. We have commented regularly on how uncomfortable this will be on some of the smaller yachts competing.

Our weather advisor reported this morning that the trades will become very light towards St Lucia this weekend, if true and we manage to nick into SL on Friday, this will assist us enormously against the slower handicap yachts who have been hard on our heels. We would of course only be concerned about this if it were a race!

We have set a new waypoint 110 miles away from St Lucia; this is the theoretical distance from which we should be able to sight the top of Grande Piton which is 2600 metres tall. It is unlikely however that we would see it from this range but it will prompt us to be looking and prepare for the cry “land ahoy!”

Dave – First Mate soon to be landlubber once again.