Baby Blue Blog Monday 28 November
Baby Blue
Baby Blue Holdings
Mon 28 Nov 2016 22:25
Hi All, Finally, less than three days away from St. Lucia, the trade winds came... Today has been eventful to say the least... Starting early this morning when a temporary repair to the main sail halyard came undone causing the main sail to ‘fall’ down the mast very quickly with yours truly underneath it (Andy S (Skipper and sailing knot maestro!) blamed the old fashioned halyard knot). As usual, the crew rallied around and we managed to use the toping lift as a make shift halyard which saved the day! The wind started to strengthen which allowed us to ‘deploy’ our secret weapon - the parasailor - allowing us to maintain some very fast speeds, topping out at 9.7 Knots! All of a sudden a pod of dolphins appeared a few hundred metres away and headed straight for the boat. This being our third dolphin encounter we were prepared having rigged up the GoPro camera to a metal broom handle we were able to take some fabulous underwater video of the dolphins playing in the bow wave (a few stills from which are below). Of course with all the sails out, dolphins documented (we concluded they were Subtropical Spotted Dolphins) the only thing missing was a big fish on the line... Mother nature obliged and shortly afterwards a large Great Barracuda was on the line and Danny and Josh had a fight on their hands! Unfortunately, Barracuda are known to be quite toxic and can carry a disease from eating reef fish which meant that we had to give him back to the sea… The sailing continued to go well and we were eating up the nautical miles as we surfed the big swells heading for St. Lucia. With Josh at the helm we were unaware that we were pushing the parasailor to its limits and suddenly it ripped (the technical term is a 'blow out’) - all hands on deck! Fortunately, the crew came together again for a second time that day to steady the ship and bring things under control. It is 19:15 local time and we are now on ‘white sails’ though still travelling fast - we are monitoring our competitors closely and the race to the finish line is on! Until tomorrow… |