Today was THE big day, after waiting for days upon days and travelling approx, 750nm as we wound our way south, we have now executed the very challenging “turn right”.  In fact, when Mike made the manoeuvre, no one noticed as all it took was, stay with me here- to turn the steering wheel to the right about 90 degrees! The sails stayed on the same side of the boat as the wind stayed on the same size of the boat- all that really happened was we “shook” out our reefs in both the main sail and the genoa. So why had we waited so long to make this daring change? Simply, the winds were coming from the wrong direction (so coming from the West of North) and we needed it to come more from due North or East of North so that we could then use it to Go West Young Man (ok, I couldn’t help myself). As it turns out, the wind did such a shift early this morning and so we were able to start our direct run to St Lucia. Our plan from the start has been to go south rather than north and this differs from a lot of the fleet- after dreaming and scheming for a LOT of years, we are not in a big hurry to finish this trip and we wanted to experience the conveyor belt of the trade winds.

 

Ok, so now that we have turned right- now what? We set the dials to 265 degrees (effectively going west) and hang on for a week or 10 days. We have travelled approx 750 nm so far and have another 2,260nm to go- not 2,250nm or 2,280nm, but, 2,260nm according to our charting package. Unfortunately, there is no adjustment factor in the package to account for our (lack of) abilities so we probably need to add at least another 10 – 15% operator error to the total. By taking the southern route we will likely have added another 150 – 200 miles to our trip- so about a day and a half.

 

Now the fun begins- guessing how long it will take us to get to St. Lucia. Already there are discussions of what our average speed is going to be, what allowances we need to make for lulls in the winds and how many stops we need to make for the fish we catch. So we invite you, dear reader, to submit your best questimate of our arrival time. The winner, if they are old enough (or their parents think they are old enough) will be rewarded with an authentic rum punch when we next see you (if you are not old enough, we will drink the rum punch and buy you a juice- aren’t we great). Send your answers to libeccio {CHANGE TO AT} mailasail {DOT} com .

 

In celebration of turning right (you may be getting the sense that we have nothing else to celebrate—you are pretty close) we had the traditional Rush Saturday breakfast of pancakes and authentic Aunt Jemima (original, no less) syrup. This was always intended to give the kids a little extra lift to get them through having to go to school on Saturdays—in reality it was an opportunity for Kevin to have something other than rabbit food and a banana. In any event, the combination of Costco sourced pancake mix and the aforementioned AJ syrup was such a hit that even Mike had some (make that seconds as well).  He has promised to deliver the Clare family Sunday breakfast,but, more about that in tomorrow’s blog.

 

Speaking of fish- (pretty smooth how we rolled into the new topic n’est pas?), Bill has taken on the challenge of researching the best ways to fish while sailing: which equipment- rods, reels, weights, lures, line, leader... for the uninitiated, it is a big undertaking. This is nothing for a man who put a world wide risk management system in one of the world’s largest banks in under 6 months- a superhuman  I think you would all agree. Over the past few months, Bill has assembled an impressive collection of fishing stuff totalling over 500 separate pieces- and he didn’t even break a sweat.  So why are telling all of this to you? Well, coincidentally with the boat turning right, Bill also turned right..... into a fisherman- not sure why they were related, but, you don’t ask superman why he flies, do you? Maybe Louis Lane would, but, we digress. Bill put out two lines: one on a conventional reel that is attached to our port pushpit (the silver looking rail at the back of the boat) and then a Bermudian rig (more on this later) on our starboard pushpits- we hope to provide photos in due course. To the Bermudian rig went a lure specially designed by Bill and on the other was the renowned (by a relatively select group we suspect) Wahoo Magnet (no, we are serious).  The rest is best told by the man himself, as he wrote to his family..

 

 

The other three of us on board did actually see the marlin jump out of the water at least three times and we all agree that it was just as well we didn’t try to land it. If we had gotten it close, we would have tried to get the hook out to release, but, apparently you also have to revive the fish with the equivalent to a kiss of life- this is true, Bill apparently looked it up on YouTube.  Included in the kit that Bill assembled is a bottle of overproof alcohol to be used to humanely dispatch the fish by pouring some down its gills- this seems a lot more preferable than repeatedly applying a large blunt object to it. Bill has always said that if we were to hook a reely (that is not a typo- its OK to groan ou tloud)  big fish, it would be a race to see who go to the alcohol first- him or the fish. As we run a dry boat, we can now understand why he is trying to get such a large catch.

 

In any event, the reel has been replenished with fishing line (200 lb test no less) and another lure attached- we are hoping for something a little more manageable next time.

 

We were surprised by the number of answers on our question about the sparks that fly off of the boat while we sail at night. We received answers from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK. Even more surprised that no one got the correct answer: that they are the diamonds on the tiaras worn by the mermaids beckoning unsuspecting sailors to come join them- particularly, those on the 01:00 – 04:00 watch! Some of you said it is bioluminescence, phosphorescence and one of you even did enough research find out that they are from tiny little animals in the sea called dino flaggelates. While all of the three anwers are correct, they are pretty boring relative to a mermaid, don’t you agree. So thanks to Tim and Natalie, David, Wendy and Roger- they really wanted their names mentioned.

 

That’s enough for now- we hope this finds you well.

 

Please do keep sending your emails to us- mail call is one of the highlights of our daily routine.

 

Best wishes,

 

 

The Crew of Libeccio

 

ps. just as we were finishing this, Bill hooked another one- a bit smaller and we didn’t manage to land it, but, we are getting closer..