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Freedom Found - Day 9 Stary nights & Crusing chutes



Position 575 miles from Cowes @ 45 47.5N 13 30.6 W @ noon Monday

Since our last update we have progressed very well. We've been taken off to the east towards the infamous Bay of Biscay notorious for bad weather, hight winds & adverse current but the weather reports showed good prospects of being able to capture a better course in a couple of days and so it has proved!

Yesterday the mist & fog came in & are still with us. Sailing Goose-winged all night with main & stay sail on opposite sides and so it remains today (Monday) earlier we have had some amazing star lit nights with sightings of satellites and shooting stars. Much colder now (compared with Azores & Florida! ) And the dew point is very noticeable in the nights leaving us & the boat covered with light water - still it washes the salt off...we have at last flown our new Cruising Chute - the large brightly coloured one at the front for those non-sailors. It was a bit scary as we hadn't flown it before and we were 500 miles off shore! but once we'd sorted all the control lines it went up a treat, doubled our speed and looked GREAT! Once up, we had the challenge of getting it down but all went to plan & it was snuffed just as they say in the text books.

Yesterday we went through the fishing fleet from Spain. They were nearly 300 miles from their home port. Lots of activity as the fog was starting to roll in upon us, thank heavens for AIS & radar which all worked well, alarming us of their presence & helping to identify the vessels surrounding us. We guessed they were't fishing as they weren't hanging around & sped off to the west further into the Atlantic. Marko is running out of books, sleep, but hopefully not ideas for what to do with mince meat! Chef says spaghetti bolognaise tonight - lots of slurping I guess. Went through stores yesterday and some fruit & veg had to be jettisoned. Difficulties of being constrained on a rolling boat, with chest fridge/freezer, damaged fruit soon spread to those adjoining.

Hoping to be into Cowes Saturday just in time for Round the Island race with 1600 other yachts - not great timing skipper! As we will be going against the flow. See you all soon Grant & Marko


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