Departing St Lucia 14:00N 64:16W

Southern Princess
John & Irene Hunt
Thu 24 Jan 2008 17:21
The World Arc started 10 minutes late. A vessel, not in the rally, went aground in the entrance channel to Rodney Bay Marina trapping a few of our yachts inside. We started OK and travelled down to the turning mark off Castries under genoa only as it was only 4 nautical miles away and when we got there we started our twin headsail rig which we have been flying every since.

One yacht reported auto pilot problems and returned to Rodney Bay while our friends Paul & Sally on 'IDEAL' a catamaran report rudder problems just after the start and anchored immediately to fix the problem. As Sally reported on the air later, chewing gum, wire ties, cable ties and a pair of her knickers did the repair work and they have now rejoined the fleet.

Our TWISTLE RIG where the two spinnaker poles to the twin headsails are joined together well forward of the mast gives us the opportunity to run down the rumb line, while the yachts which are relying on a main sail and a poled out genoa have to tack backwards and forwards to get to the same mark. It will be interesting to see how we have fared distance wise!

No fish as yet but there again we haven't had a line over the side until this morning.

Just completed our noon time position report and it looks as though we did around 200nm for the 24 hours. Not bad! And it puts us in touch with some of the larger yachts.

No pictures as yet but they will come.

More tomorrow I hope.

John & Irene