Nisida - Log 1 - Monday 24/11

Saturday night the crew had a nice dinner at the Italian restaurant, watched the fireworks. The crew of nine is made of Peter and Hillary from the UK, Pamela from Scotland, Phelim and Barry from Dublin, Eric from France, Jenny from the UK, Gabriela from Austria, and Val from Bulgaria.Sunday morning, start day. We finish setting up Nisida and ... ready to cast off. Oh no! The engine won't get in gear. After a few minutes of suspense, the gear box finally cooperates and off we go at 11:00am to the starting line just outside the harbour. The committee boat is a Spanish navy ship, not as big as a ferry boat (see ARC 2006!) but quite visible. Good start on main and Genoa. The initial move will be to decide when to gybe at the southern end of the Gran Canarias. This is the initial run down the. read more...

Nisida - Log #2 - tuesday Nov 25

Day 2: Nov 24 -25, the night of the UFO'sVery light wind this monday afternoon, ... and coming from the south east.  We are close reach at 220M. The speed drops to 4 knots at times. Clearly not in the trade winds yet. Well, no risk of broaching on this angle. Second dinner where the Gabriela  watch retorts to the chicken in wine with a nice soup. The wind picks up but we are still close reach.Night falls, night of strange apparitions. First we see a large, diffuse green illumination on the horizon. Speculations abound when it suddenly disappears. Maybe the deck lights of a yacht changing sails? A couple hours later we notice a fast flashing orange light. It seems to be coming to us. This corresponds to none of the regulation lights that ships must show at night.The radar shows ... read more...

Nisida - Log #3 - wednesday Nov 26

Nisida - Log #3 - Nov 25-26The afternoon was very slow, hard to keep the kite flying. The wind increased in the evening and we made some good time for a change. By 2:00am, the wind was too much for the light spinnaker..We took it down and gybed on a favorable windshift. We sailed the rest of the night on genoa. By mid morning the spinnaker was back on. Apart from this, the night was uneventful, no submarines, no pirates, only shooting stars, lots of them.... And from the east came Caspian Services (we think) who passed us and seemed to set on a parallel course on our west. This was too much for Val, our short course champ. He took it personnally; by late afternoon, Caspian Services was far behind.The corner is approaching fast. Nobody wants to bump into the Cabo Verde islands. There is a. read more...

Nisida - Log #4 - wednesday Nov 27

Nisida - Log #4 - Nov 26-27Wednesday afternoon, still bearing 230 toward Cabo Verde. Spinnaker is up, Nisida speeds down nice rollers. We set up the #2 spinnaker for the night. Night of spinnaker sailing and first flying fish attack, on Peter's head  while he is helming.Thursday morning, we gybe on a favorable wind shift (we tend to do that a lot!). Weare now heading straight to St Lucia for the first time since the start. On this new tack, the waves roll very much along our course, and great speed is achieved. Our run for the day is 225 miles, best since the start.Pam manages to connect the Ipods to the outside speakers. One watch starts a program of fitness, Pilates style. The other watch enjoys great Irish stories. The  sea water is still cool but warming up. So Nisida's Tropical Spa. read more...

Nisida - Nisida - Log #5 - friday Nov 27

Nisida - Day #5 - Nov 27-28Days on the ARC are from noon to noon, punctuated by the position given at noon everyday. We continued on our 225 miles on day 4 by logging 122 miles from noon to midnight. But the winds decreased and our overall run today was 205 miles.This has been a day of practice. Thursday afternoon we took down the spinnaker to check the halyard, set the genoa, reset the spinnaker, took down the genoa. Around midnight we took advantage of a favourable wind shift to gybe (not kidding!). At dawn, as the wind lightened, we replaced the heavy spinnaker with the light one. There must be a few more gybes and poling of the spinnaker or removing of the pole. It's all a blur for the crew. What we are sure of is that these tactical decisions allowed us to take advantage of the. read more...