25:12.65N 57:46.63W

 

Day 4 dawned bright and early and we are now getting into the new time.  Dawn breaks at about 0730 and it is getting dark at about 2030 – we have advanced our clocks 2 hours from W Indies and are now three hours behind BST.  I cant work out what that means in Hong Kong or Australia...  In summary Food is great, banter is still interesting and the sailing is fantastic.

 

Progress remains good and our noon day runs have been 177Nm, 180Nm and 167Nm.  However it looks like we have finally broken out of the trade winds and are experiencing light Southerly winds.  At one point this afternoon the wind was coming from W of South – so it seems we may be getting into the N & Westerly Air stream.  Right now it is warm and sunny and we have about 7knots of wind from SE and are making about 6.5knots over the ground.  We have been flying the spinnaker for the last 4 hours – which has been great fun, but being headed we thought it should come down before it got dark.

 

Simon’s fruit cake was even better than his chocolate cake and the first loaf of bread was a triumph.  As I type this I have just had a great explosion down my back accompanied by language otherwise unheard of.  Simon tells me it was the salt going into the next loaf of bread, which by the sounds of it may not turn out quite as good as the last one.

 

Earlier this afternoon we were getting ready to hoist the spinnaker when there was a run on the fishing line and, being the poised racing crew we are, we stopped all sailing activity to land our first Dorade (maui maui).  It is quite small and so will do us for dinner and a little left over for an amuse-bouche demain.  At that point we discovered our first calamity.  Unsurprisingly after a week of cruising (we hoped!) in the W Indies we had run out of white wine to have with the fish.  Simon – ever resourceful – suggested that we should chill the red wine and have that instead.  Thank god we havent got to that yet – as at least we have some rose to drink and, if I remember rightly from Martinique Dr D is rather partial to the odd drop of rose.  We shall see what it tastes like after 6 months in a caribbean bilge.

 

Our other minor problem this afternoon is that the membrane on the main ships compass has fallen apart letting air into the steering compass.  Fortunately we caught it very early and have plugged the holes with silicon – which when dry should keep us going.

As far as the Nav is concerned, we are now heading NE and are about 200Nm to the west of a Swan 46 which left Antigua a couple of days before us.  It seems like they are experiencing the same weather as us – so we are all in for some calms for a few days.

 

Hear it is v cold and wet in England.  Suddenly got very hot here, but I have been wearing a sweater at night for last couple of evenings.

 

A bientot..