Geoff Sinton, who is crewing with us as far as the Azores, arrived on Thursday and we left Antigua yesterday, bound for St Maartin.  We had expected it to be an overnight sail but we arrived at 2.00am, having left 15 hours earlier.  It was mostly a broad reach, with a fairly flat sea.  We were hit by a squall of 30 knot winds just north of Antigua, but had alreadly taken the spinnaker down and were under mainsail and a small amount of unfurled genoa so the boat handled it easily.

 

As night fell, the sky cleared to a beautiful starry night, and the sea was sparkling with phosphoresence.  The 110 miles to St Maartin passed incredibly quickly.  Today we have been shopping for provisions for our trip to Bermuda as well as the usual boat bits.  We have also bought an SSB radio receiver.  We can't transmit but wanted to be able to hear forecasts over the radio as a backup for our email via satelite phone method.  It will also be nice to hear our friends on other boats chatting from afar.

 

Today is Charlie's 41st birthday and we are planning to eat ashore tonight.  Tomorrow morning we will depart for Bermuda (subject to any last minute adverse weather forecasts).  It is 850 miles from here.  We are looking forward to some cooler weather - it is a humid 30 degrees at night here and the mosquitos are a real nuisance.

 

We will endeavour to update the website while at sea, although may not manage to do it every day!