Yesterday was another parasail day in a fickle 6- 10 knots of easterlies , propelling shellie along in the low 5's.fantastic day for sun baking and sleeping. Just on sunset off to port there was a new line of cloud with hopefully some breeze in it. We decided to go hunting and made a "kill"around 9 pm last night as the breeze built to a steady 12-16 knots and began to clock left back to the northeast.
The parasail test in 12-16? With the eyes at night on?louvre said " let's give it a go". Louvre excelled in the conditions to around midnight when the sea state was starting to get the better of him, and so we decided to take the " sting" out of shellie.
Pretty impressive numbers for the parasailor 14 knots 7.3 knots boat speed and at 16 knots fully powered up doing hull speed of around 8 knots.
As we were left of the rhumb line and felt we were far enough into the new pressure , we socked the parasailor , gybed over onto starboard and went with a reef in the main ( which hadnt been used for the last couple of days) and a poled out no 1 headsail, still giving us low 7's straight down the rhumb line and more importantly louvre had stopped whinging.
The nights are fantastic consisting of shorts ,tee shirt and lifejacket, kicking back on the lounge chairs counting shooting stars, it doesn't get much better than this.
As the last 6 days have been somewhat lacking in horsepower ,Hopefully today the elusive "trades."stay in ,because we can see the light at the end of the tunnel---- Saint Lucia
Cheers from the crew La Rochelle