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Firefly - Irish Sea



The wind has increased overnight, we now have about 25 knots of wind and as it frequently has on this trip, it looks like the Irish Sea! (But is much warmer and blue!) We reached the milestone of 500 Miles to go on Murray's watch last night. Our forecast is for the wind to increase so we are anticipating maintaining our good progress and making landfall sometime later on Wednesday, early on Thursday. We are heading for English Harbour and will drop the hook in Freeman's Bay for a kip before going stern to on Nelson's Dockyard in order to complete our arrival procedures and then find that first rum punch.

It has to be said that while the crew are all happy, after 17 days at sea we are looking forward to getting to Antigua. The Leeward Islands pilot books were out yesterday and being studied in anticipation and there was definitely an air of excitement.

We are running goosewinged with full main and a few reefs in the jib. Firefly's jib boom is prevented from gybing by the gennaker tack line that goes to the end of the gennaker bowsprit - the arrangement working really well, good and stable and easy to reef and gybe. The mainsail has a preventer line running from the end of the boom to a block on the forward fairlead and back to a winch in the cockpit. The boat is rolling quite a lot with the odd big one when 'Albert' the fella steering (he is a Raymarine SPX10 autohelm) loses his concentration!

Once we are in Antigua there are several comings and goings, Barney comes to see us for a week, Murray is returning to the UK, Susie and Jane arrive and we will spend Christmas in Antigua then cruise south through the islands of Gaudaloupe, Dominica and Martinique en route to St Lucia. The World ARC rally opening drinks party is on the evening of 6th January so our plan is to reach Rodney Bay in time for that.

Paul, Murray, Peter and Grateful (looking forward to that rum punch!)




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