Sailing South

Mollihawk's Atlantic Circumnavigation
eddie/david nicholson
Tue 25 Nov 2008 15:40

Date 25th November

Position 23°24 North 18°09 West

 

 

All’s well with the crew and the weather holds fair but the winds are light. This year the reliable steady trade winds has been forced south by a low depression in mid Atlantic. We are now sailing south down the cost of Africa to the Cape Verde islands.

At the starting line there were over two hundred boats and by our first nights watch that count had reduced to 32 boats in our line of sight.  Last night our sighting numbers had reduced to 18. This morning we crossed course with another competitor (see photo) showing the need to be on constant watch even here in the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. Our day shifts are 3 hours on on your own and at night 4 hours on always with another crew.

 Once we have reached the Cape Verde Islands we with swing west into the Atlantic to ride the westerly trade winds to St. Luca.
On the bad side there is one note to be reported the fishing is not going so well the line is out but no fish have been tempted yet to our colourful lures.(james : we may not caught any fish yet but we do still have all our bait!)When we catch one that doesn't get away we will put it up on the blog. .......stop there has just been a cry from the Hod that there are Tuna jumping out of the water !!if my next blog omits the story about the fish you know that ti was another one that got away!
 
We are currently
For the first 24 hours sailing we covered 140 n miles putting us ahead of all in our handicap class except one boat Haerlem .,    we have also stayed ahead of Kert's Big Spirit which is an old challange 72 footer and presently on our beam.Ahead of us are Picollo who have a crew member who knows Mike Hod.and the Italian boat Malaika 5 who we have a wager of a bottle of Irish Whiskey to the one who is first to St.Lucia!
but all this may well change after a light night's sailing
bye 4 a while
de mollihawk blogger

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