Day 6 ARC - Heading West
Sulana's Voyage
Alan and Sue Brook
Fri 26 Nov 2010 19:33
Mixed fortunes in the night, the good reaching breeze continued until the
early hours - and then we were in the doldrums again. Finally it filled in
from the NNE and we made a tactical decision; instead of continuing South to
reach the fabled west going trade winds we have turned west on to a great
circle course for St Lucia.
The trade wind seems to be further south and pretty weak anyway and probably
not worth the extra distance.
We are likely to face head winds in a couple of days and if that sends us a
bit more south then so be it. At least every mile will now be off the
distance to run to the finish!
Currently we are bowling along on a spinnaker reach with only 2,200 miles to
go...
Yesterday evening we caught our first fish, or rather Fi did. A small Mahi
Mahi for a starter (at least we hope it is just a starter, in any event it
made a fine starter for the evening meal.
One of the other yachts has caught one weighing in at 15 kilos and since
ours was 3 we have a bit to do. We nearly did it this morning when we hooked
a huge version of the breed and got it alongside when, with a massive leap
and twist, he escaped - obviously a wise old beast. At least we have video
photographic evidence from PC, even if we don't have juicy fish steaks.
We had a long radio chat with friends, Martin and Elizabeth Bevan on their
two handed voyage with "Caduceus" and apart from trouble with their furling
cruising chute they seem in very good spirits, well done them.
We are also enjoying the radio chit-chat on the SSB, particularly that just
started up with a Swan 66 just ahead of us, called "Godot", which is
apparently full of Norwegian Trawlermen! They decided to join in the Group
Charlie SSB Net fishing competition today, so Alan asked them to try fishing
using their trawls, so we could catch them up.
