Wed 26 November
The temperature continues to rise as we make our passage South. The NNE or NE breeze has been more consistent today allowing better progress to be made although we continue to head South rather than West. Our log distance is considerably less than recorded on the ARC website as I am reporting actual distance travelled through the water compared to VMG towards our destination of ST Lucia. There are fascinating times ahead regarding tactics as there appear to be more than one large area of very light winds in which you could all so easily sail into. Although there is a good trade wind flow established around latitude 20N, this does not look although it will be sustained for more than a few days. We have only sighted one yacht today which was around 8NM astern and heading in a more Westerly direction. Like our competitors I am sure, large chunks of our day revolve around position reporting at midday, sending and reading e-mails and then trying to plot where our nearest class rivals are. Richard has made up a spreadsheet so we can track our class and see where we are. While it may look like we are struggling on VMG, I am happy with our boat speed with the blue beast continuing to fly and tow Flyer along behind! The e-mail has been invaluable for keeping in contract and with support. I contacted Charlie Ambrose the Hanse Scotland agent with a technical problem regarding our battery charging cycle. First thing in the morning he was on the Sat Phone to give advice along with Jeff Rutherford which was a great response. We are able to charge the batteries no problem, but each successive cycle was drawing them down less and causing us to have recharge them again due to low voltage problems. We are now going to change the way we are charging, limiting this to 1 hour cycles to re-set the smart regulator each time. The other routine we never miss onboard is mealtimes. We still have fresh vacuum packed meat in the fridge so no need to go fishing just yet and Buster is taking the lead in providing noursihment for 5 hungry crew, no easy task as you can imagine.
After dark this evening we had another visit by some dolphins. This was another amazing show by nature as each one that approached left a bright trail of phosphorescence behind. This was truly spectacular and although I have seen plenty of phosphorescence trails before, I had never seen them made by dolphins.
Dave Sturrock