Slightly less impressive of our fellow ARC participants is a tendency for boats to go “dark” at night. Yes, it is true that it gets dark very early in this part of the world, but, what we are speaking of is boats who turn off their AIS systems at night and behave in a manner not fitting of proper sea-people. We had seen this on the first night of the rally when boats chose to use their engines at one stage as the wind had died. To avoid detection and therefore not have to pay the time penalty, they turn off their AIS and ghost through the fleet- tricky, eh? Last night in Kevin’s watch, he had been watching a handful of boats (or is it a school? a pod? ) that were in close proximity to his location. One of the boats was running in a parallel course behind the good ship Libeccio, but nothing terribly exciting. Just as the other boat was getting into a potentially interesting (meaning, possible collision course) the other boat turns off his AIS, forcing us to switch to radar to track his course. His intentions became very clear when he cut across our bow less than 100m away- we know this because, notwithstanding there is no moon and it is pitch black out here at night, we could track his navigation lights. Completely unnecessary and leaving us having to take evasive action under sail and wondering if he should have been on the bridge of that cargo ship doing the dog shift in reflection of his intellectual capacity. Ok, so we didn’t  actually have to wonder about that answer.

 

Much as in the Hobbit (how is that for a lead in), we the ARC participants leave together on a trek from Las Palmas that will take a long time (longer for some of us) and involve more than a few adventures along the way. Like the Hobbit, there seem to be fewer and fewer of us. At least, those that we can see on our navigational devises. In fact, while writing this blog, I can no longer see any other boats.  Was it something we said? Although we are reliably told that it is a very large ocean out there, that they are there just over the horizon , that nothing sinister is happening and we will all have a big reunion in Rodney Bay—one can’t help to wonder.

 

Do you ever something that you know isn’t really good for you but you just can’t help yourself? Whether it be the guilty pleasure of one more chocolate, that wee dram of whiskey as a night cap or, in our case, flying Izzy.  What, you may well ask is an Izzy and how does one fly such a thing while sailing? Izzy is our pet name for our Parasail- it is similar to a spinnaker but has a hole in the middle where they have inserted a part of a parachute—get it, Para(chute) Sail? In any event it is manufactured by Iztec, so we cleverly have called ours Izzy (if we think this is clever perhaps are the ones that should be on the bridge of that cargo ship mentioned earlier!). In any event, Izzy is brilliant when you are going more or less down wind- less so when going across the wind.  Today’s winds were perfect for using (this is the flying bit) Izzy except the wind was not really going in the best direction for us and we had sails that would have been better to use. With a collective age well 250 yrs, we did the mature thing and... raised Izzy. It was a glorious afternoon of sailing despite it taking us further south than we had intended to go at this stage. Oh well, we didn’t want to get to St Lucia that quickly anyways.

 

That’s it for now, we have to tuck into a dinner of salmon steaks pan fried with a little dash of salt and pepper, rice and a green salad.

 

Best wishes,

 

The Crew of Libeccio