ARC Blog - Day 13 - Flying Fish and Trade Routes
Sulana's Voyage
Alan and Sue Brook
Fri 3 Dec 2010 21:02
Day 13 and, as at 18:00 UTC, our position on the 3rd is, as we had intended, close to the Lat/Long we wanted to reach to find better breeze in, when we decided to come South some three days ago.
If the children from New Hall Junior School and Tring Park School Year One are still with us - welcome.
We with Sulana have been working our way south to join one of the world's great 'Trade Routes'. These occur in various parts of the world at particular times and this one usually runs from the region of the Cape Verde Islands off Africa across the Atlantic to the Caribbean. It comes in the form of a steady breeze blowing from East to West which helped old sailing ships to cross with cargos to the Caribbean Islands and The New World (North America). They would carry cargos of tools, utensils and all sorts of home comforts from Europe.
Sadly, there were also the terrible slave ships whose crews would catch African people -men, women and children- and transport them into slavery in the Caribbean where they had to work as prisoners on the sugar cane plantations in the heat, in terrible depravation. The arriving cargo ships would buy sugar and rum and continue north to the Southern States of America for tobacco before returning to England/Europe with the help of the powerful currents of the Gulf Stream in the North Atlantic. So a circular trading route was established.
We are following so much history as we do this although for us it has not been easy to get here. The trade winds are a long way South at the moment at latitude 12 degrees rather than the normal 20.(How many miles extra is that?). We are now, after a mixture of no wind, light head winds and rain squalls, finally down to latitude 14 degrees N and we finally have a southerly wind blowing us west very nicely at around 8 knots, or 10 miles per hour, in the direction of St Lucia some 1350 miles ahead. 8 knots does not sound much, but it is if you keep it going hour after hour whilst you continue to run the boat, eat, sleep and enjoy convivial conversation.
Meanwhile the superb sunsets and wonderful colours of the dawn continue to amaze and delight us. Each new morning brings around our personal visit from a White-Tailed Tropic bird and also reveals the extent of our overnight catch of flying fish in the scuppers along our side decks.
These amazing little fish are such fantastic creations to watch sprint out away from under our bows. They can often glide nearly a hundred metres away, using the tip of their lower tail fin to 'flick' themselves off again for a further quick boost of speed on an intermediate wavetop.
We have watched shoals of 60 or 70 of these fantastic little creatures take off before our foaming bow wave, disappearing into the wave crests to either side of Sulana in a flashing shimmer of diamonds and bejewelled scales, with the water droplets reflecting sunlight off their extended pectoral fins (wings). What a sight!
All the best for now, from Peter and Alan.
