13:28.0S 26:44.3W

 

We are now a little over half way towards Salvador. We have managed to sail for the past couple of days enjoying flying one or other of our spinnakers, depending on the wind strength. We have carried these sails for thousands of miles without ever getting them out of the toy box so were beginning to wonder whether they might have been an unnecessary purchase. However, they have more than earned their place on board with the miles we’ve covered since Cape Town.

 

Recent days have been spent with us all devouring books, Tim hosting a craft morning on knots and needle matches of cribbage before dinner. Not exactly hard core sailing but I’ll take that over the Indian Ocean any day!  Chris is winning the cribbage at the moment but that could all change. Play had to be abandoned yesterday evening with a down turn in the weather; squalls approaching and a quick manoeuvre to douse the spinnaker and revert to white sails for the night. Clouds are forming to our south east now but we are hoping to keep the spinnaker flying overnight. We have had the most wonderful moonlit, starry nights which should keep us company all the way to Salvador.

 

Fishing has had to take a back seat whilst flying the spinnaker as it’s just too hard to slow down in time but Tim took the opportunity of sailing under white sails to manufacture a demon lure complete with snap-light for trailing at night. The lure glowed behind us all night but sadly to no avail.

 

We have now sailed over 27,000 nm in Ghost since we took delivery of her in Denmark .... quite a long way.