Sunday 3 December 2023
The Adventures of Tin Man
Andy Topp & Steve Arnold
Sun 3 Dec 2023 22:14
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14:29.98N
043:55.88W [my what three words app won't update so can't give the
three word location ID tonight]
After the relative excitement and adrenaline rush of
jumping into the water yesterday, the vibe on Tin Man today has been very chill
- very Sunday. It's been another beautiful day of wall to wall sunshine and we
have all taken a bit of time away from making bread, or mince pies, or really
doing anything too strenuous at all. In fact we have barely moved since our
morning coffee meeting at around 8am boat time this morning.
However, with a new day come new milestones and today
was a triple whammy. Sometime around coffee time we passed the 2,000 mile mark
on our journey since Gran Canaria. I had a lazy start to the day so I missed it
unfortunately but only by a couple of miles. I know I may start to sound like
broken record but I still can't believe that we have sailed for 2,000 miles at
the pace of a brisk walk out into the middle of the Atlantic. It's hard to get a
sense of scale as you can only see about five miles until the horizon drops off
and it's the same in each direction. It isn't until we zoom out on the chart or
look at the little blue dot on Google maps on our phone that we remember.
Today also marks two weeks at sea since the start of the
ARC. It feels like a lifetime but also five minutes both at once. I have to keep
reminding myself to savour every single moment. So when I'm reading, or cooking,
or just doing nothing, I remind myself to look around at the sea, at the sky, at
the sunrise, or the sunset, or to listen to the ever present sound of water
rushing by. I know this experience will be over in a week and then Andy and I,
Sam, Will and Jooj, will be onto the next experience, and there are things I'm
looking forward to - being stationary, sleeping in a bed that doesn't move,
walking more than five steps in any one direction, not being slammed into a door
frame every time I try to pass through one, being just a few. But in some ways I
don't want it to end; life out here on the sea is simple - you have no
distractions from the world, no depressing news and world events, no commitments
- just you and your friends on an adventure. It's very appealing.
The third and final milestone we reached today, just a
few hours ago, was that we now have under 1,000 miles to go. Seems like a lot
but also feels strangely like we are now on the home stretch even though it is
1,000 miles and will take us a week. We have three bottles of champagne on board
which are strictly not being chilled until we are almost at St Lucia for fear
that a crisp cold bottle of champagne in the fridge when we are perilously low
on most other drinks, is too much of a temptation. We will also (we think)
be given a bottle of rum by the ARC on our arrival. Today we set up another
sweepstake, the prize for which is an extra glass of champagne out of each
bottle, the first swig of the rum, and being the 'Neil Armstrong' of the crew
and being given the honour of being the first to set foot on land. So earlier we
all made predictions about when we would reach a 10 mile waypoint from St Lucia
with all crew going for Sunday 10th between 0730hrs and 2017hrs St Lucia time
(with a plus one hour window). We have also all just agreed that by doing so we
have firmly cemented our arrival time in for Monday!
We continue to 'fish' by trailing our two lines behind
the boat. So far the fastest rubber squid in the west has only managed to be a
haven for seaweed and both lines were mercifully unfruitful today. The sense
that we need to keep doing this but all hoping that we don't catch anything is a
weird contradiction we have sort of just accepted now. By all accounts our
compadres on other ARC vessels have had much more success. We had a brief radio
chat with the boat we were pontoon neighbours with for the week prior to
departure in Las Palmas (who are now just a few miles from us) who mentioned
they had managed to catch a marlin that was 2.1m long - apparently it took an
hour to land it on to the boat. We didn't ask any more questions but the thought
of having a 2.1m long fish thrashing around in the cockpit whilst we tried to
smack it over the head with a mallet is both comical and disturbing in equal
measure.
Sailing continues to be great. Our day sail plan for the
last few days has been to fly the bright pink spinnaker and then at sunset we
switch to the white sails with the genoa poled out. This tends to work fine but
we had some light winds over night which slowed our average speed down. With a
bit of unsettled weather over the coming few nights flying the spinnaker in the
dark is just a bit too much effort. THe wind is due to back a little and become
more north easterly over the next few days which will mean we
can hopefully fly the code zero which will really improve the speed.
Maybe the Sunday arrival isn't too optimistic.
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