A fairly quiet uneventful day, overnight on Di’s watch the wind got up to about 18kts and we had to furl away Code Blue – not as easy as it says on the packet or quite as easy as the salesman told us – we are rapidly beginning to appreciate Old Blue, our cruising chute, as easier to handle.

 

We set all the white sails and thundered off into to the night, but by daybreak the wind was dying and after several sail changes we settled for flying Old Blue on its own with the wind around 7kts. We have some swell, but wave trains are steady and we have enough wind to power the boat up on tack, but in such light airs progress is slow and behind our target arrival dates.

 

We messed around on the boat, caught no fish but I had to repair the lures again as one had been damaged and the other had a broken hook, then just as dusk fell we hooked into a big one, but by the time we pulled on the line it had gone - Suzanne had seen fins close to our lures during the day, not shark, but big fish. So it’s lasagne salad with garlic bread tonight, not sashimi followed by Teriyaki tuna with noodles.

 

We caught up with a yacht off on our port bow about 4 miles ahead, flying his spinnaker, so we are obviously sailing well, but he headed further south as we went past him and we lost him by early evening. We had a squadron of 4 Egrets circle the boat several times looking to land and rest their tired wings, but with Old Blue fluttering and me sat on the aft deck making up the lures, we had several “fly byes” and off they went. We have seen plenty of flying fish, but only had a few land on deck – plus one small squid who left his black ink as a calling card on our jack stays.

 

Hollie has been great, we threw buckets of sea water around to keep cool – my very expensive designer sunnies went over the side, the batteries are still not behaving and it’s Kindle City for Steve and Suzanne with their Amazon toys. I even got time for do a Reiki session for Di. Steve shot some video of us creaming along at 9kts, so we will put on a film show in the village hall called “Me n Elsie’s Trip Ecky Thump” and serve tea out of green china cups like the WI use.

 

TELEGRAM PLS SEND WIND SOONEST STOP S2 CREW

 

1,734M to go to Bridgetown, Barbados.

 

Suzie Too and Crew