So we're now on day 6 and have covered 573 nm, which makes this my longest ever single trip, and we're not even 1/4 the way there yet.

 so since my last post we have spent another day or so with little wind doing at best 5 knots but mostly 3.5-4, which has felt like we are barely moving and the trip meter has been ticking over painfully slowly, however this had not been entirely unpleasant, it has given us a couple of lovely lazy days with a relatively calm sea and the sun shining, although the fishermen, bob and Dave, have been complaining that they cannot be expected to catch fish if we're not  doing at least 6 knots but we have plenty of provisions and we are still eating fresh fruit and veg which is great! recently we have had a couple of companions along the way, yesterday we spent all day sailing close to a Norwegian bavaria and only split up last night as we decided to take different routes from here on, also yesterday we were joined for a short while by some dolphins which was luckily whilst I was stood on the bow so I got to watch them playing in our bow wave and dodging each other with amazing speed and grace.

            So following yesterday as a lovely calm day the wind began to change to the east and as we don't think we are into the trade winds proper yet the skipper made the decision to change the rig setup to allow us reach. So this meant dismantling our beautiful twin headsail rig with our twin poles. so unlike with our previous sail changes we didn't do the sensible thing and sit down and make a plan, no we got our lifejackets on and filtered out on to deck, 5 minutes later we see the error of ours waves as the plan I had in my head for sorting the sails didn’t quite work and no one quite knew what was going on so we all got ourselves in a nice tangle on deck but with 2 headsails a spinnaker pole and the boom. but all’s well that ends well about 20mins later all was sorted and we were on our new course with 2 genoas set, (one over the top of the other, acting as one), and the main full out, and soon the wind also began to increase to speed us on our way so from the initial 10 knots it got up to first around 15 so we were blasting along at about 6, then all the way up to 20knots where at points we  were doing 7.5 knots, Great it will get our average speed right up.

            Once we were settled on our new course speeding along at 6knots, bob and Dave got the rods out again and as dusk was fall we got the first bite unfortunately we were not lucky today only one out of 3 fish were landed. As night fell we reefed in both the sails to enable us to have a more comfortable night, whilst still steaming along at 6knots.  

 So today we woke up un reefed the sails and are now steaming south to the cape verdes at 7knots, Beautiful.

Hope all are well!

James