16:45.5N 31:20.4W

Wed 22^nd & Thurs 23^rd Dec

Wednesday continued just as the night that preceded it, with the wind blowing a steady 20 – 25 knots generally from the ENE which meant that we were on a very broad reach, just off a run.

We made excellent time racking up 154 miles in 24 hours and constantly able to keep to our rumb line.

In the mid afternoon we were joined by a dozen or more Atlantic Spotted dolphins who at first seemed rather shy, but gradually became more and more friendly and ended up with them riding our bow as if Serafina was actually on their backs. They stayed playing and showing off for about 40 minutes before disappearing as suddenly as they had arrived.

As the day wore on, the wind began to veer making it impossible to maintain our chosen course so we gradually edged our way north of the line. Scott-Free were just a couple of miles away throughout the day and gradually a third yacht overhauled us both and by dark had vanished over the short horizon.

The wind and seas eased quite a bit in the night and to reduce the problem of the headsail slapping, we reefed it heavily and sheeted it hard . This still allowed us to make reasonable speed although we continued to slip further and further north of the rumb line.

In the morning we took a VHF call from S-F who now had a problem. They had gone forward on deck to put out their downwind poles and found that a large part of the yankee headsail’s UV sacrificial strip had come unstitched and needed urgent repair.  They were just telling us that they planned to heave-to (stop) and take the sail down and sew it up. This is OK with no wind in a marina, but bobbing around several hundred miles out into the Atlantic Ocean is less appealing. During the night we had sailed quite a bit faster than them and so we were nearly 12 miles ahead of them and with knowledge that they were now going to stop altogether we immediately decided to turn round and sail back towards them. We had always planned to make this crossing together and we were hardly in a position to help each other being so far apart so heading back was an easy choice. Serafina is quite a bit faster on most points of sailing being longer than S-F so it is rather up to us to make the effort to check our speed and stay in touch. This support works both ways as it is very reassuring to see a mast light by night and their sails by day with so little else around.

It was nearly 3 hours before we caught sight of their mast and it was at this point that they announced that the repair had been made, but now they had to get the sail back onto its furler which is a deal harder than getting it down! Sarah decided that she could usefully spend this time repairing the tear and the zip on our bimini cover and so she spent the next hour or so stitching some cloth in and when she had finished we put it back up on its frame which was a great relief as it was very hot without its shade all day.

We rigged our downwind sails and pottered along slowly to let S-F catch us up but again the wind thwarted us and we ended up sailing all night with just a reefed main on a broad reach whilst they slowly overhauled us.

Around 5.00 am we were all back in action as a large cargo ship ‘Cape Spencer’, seemed to have decided that the Atlantic was not quite big enough for them to make their way round us and seemed intent on running both us and Scott-Free down (their CPA Closest Point of Approach was 0-24 feet!). Sarah radioed the  bridge and asked if they had seen us on their radar and AIS, and after a short pause they were able to confirm this and agreed that they would alter course to pass behind us. In the event they did no such thing but opted to pass in front of us, but without telling us of this change of heart. This certainly put them on a new course to avoid us by a small margin but they seemed to be ignoring S-F now! Steve called them and asked their intentions and they acknowledged his position and said that they would avoid him, but he was back on the radio after a few minutes to complain that they were still coming far too close for safety. In the end the ship did alter course again and as they passed by, they called Steve up and seemed to be hoping for a grateful ‘thank you’ but they got a rather frosty response from S-F which was, not surprisingly, a little short on Christmas cheer!

We had three flying fish on the decks during the night – not sure why we bothered to bring the rods......   They were fairly small but as they skitter down the deck, they obligingly shed loads of surprisingly large scales.