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Adina - Day 5 - let's talk about wind, let's talk



Day 5 dawned with sadly no wind and us motoring. Which we don't really want to do - we are here to sail an Ocean!

Each day the skippers get together for a chat on the radio around 1pm. It is now clear there are a lot of boats that motored from day 1 and are heading to the Cape Verde islands to refuel. There are some of us trying to squeeze every last drop of wind into our wonderful sails. We are only motoring when there is no wind as we have to appreciate crew have flights to catch. There are even purists who haven't touched their engines - heartfelt respect to them.

This explains our position. Today we heard that two weather routing experts advised staying east of 20W and to go south of the Cape Verde islands to 15N to find the treasure of trade winds. This has always been our intended route although 180 miles further south than we anticipated. Skip Tom did some analysis on the route options and we had a good team talk with all contributing. We agreed to a crew member we'll stick with this. So our route may look odd, indeed those motoring will refuel, and will most likely get in before us. No sour grapes, why not? Us - we can't wait to hoist our spinnaker and sail in those glorious trade winds.

Onboard crew have a positive attitude working really hard, trimming the sails constantly, helming by hand. Truth be told I haven't had this much fun since racing days and we're only a cruising boat!

A massive pod of dolphins danced around the boat delighting us and Lindsay was heard coaxing them to leap "Come on Miranda!" - dolphins called Miranda? Gareth suggested they were showing us the way - let's hope so.

Neil cooked up a treat of asian-style pork that went down a treat - we eat very well!

We must say a big thank you for all your blog comments. We eat dinner around 7pm and as a ritual Tom them reads them all out - it's a highlight!

Yesterdays answer to whose a scuba instructor who tastes wine below the sea is Tom! Today's question is who has eaten and enjoyed sea urchins?

Dawn on day 6 and we have some wind. Blow now wind, blow, take us south, fill our sails, Adina is sailing.




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