Day 13 ,14 and 15 Position
Stravaig
Sun 7 Dec 2008 18:51
As predicted the winds arrived right on cue at 11.30 last night (Saturday
night).... which is just as well really since we only have about a day's
worth of fuel left! The winds were light to begin with which meant we had to
keep the donkey (engine!) going to stop the sails from flogging however by
4.30am this morning the winds had risen to between 13 and 18 knots which
meant we could switch the engine off for the first time in 5 days - yippee-
and put the sails up!!! We are sailing!!! If we keep going at this rate
(8.5-9knots) then we are hoping that we will arrive in to St Lucia on the
morning of the 10th December - so only 4 days to go, or more importantly,
only 3 more night watches to go!!!!!
The one thing that all of us have found quite difficult to cope with on this
journey is the watch system and in particular the night watches. It is the
managing (or mismanaging!) of your time and the resultant tiredness that is
the killer! As soon as you get off watch and have some food, you really must
be disciplined enough to head to bed for some sleep otherwise the temptation
is to stay up and either; keep sailing; read a book, do some homework
(Cameron!) or watch a movie etc. Before you know it, it is time to go back
on watch and the cycle begins again but this time you're feeling more tired
than the time before. If when we get home you find us sleeping at odd times
during the day and waking at odd times during the night then you'll
understand why!!!
We have had some great fishing over the course of the past few days. On
Friday, Alex and Scott caught a Wahoo on the early watch (7am) weighing in
at around 8lb's and yesterday (Saturday) we caught two fairly large Wahoo.
This brings the total fish caught on the trip to 6 so far - a huge King
Mackerel, a Sailfish (although we are beginning to debate whether this is
indeed what we caught the other day - it was beautiful though!) and three
Whaoo!
We have started having some amazing night skies again after a few very
cloudy nights lately. Last night Cameron and Scott saw some amazing shooting
stars again - almost as good as the fireworks but not quite!! Last night the
sky was so bright from light from the stars alone that you could have read a
book! Quite astonishing.
So we have less than 500 miles to go and with more winds expected later
today and into this evening we are all taking the chance to catch up with
our sleep this afternoon! Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!
A few pictures for you today; A photo of one of the Wahoo's that we caught
yesterday; a 'formal' group photo of all of us (except Angus) taken earlier
today followed by the unofficial version which was taken immediately after
Tom started throwing water bombs at us - how childish; a group photo of us
all without Alex ;and finally one of these damn suicidal flying fish which
keep landing on deck at night - they are everywhere and it is scary when
they land so close to you in the dark!!
