"Thanks for leaving the light on" is what skipper Jan said to Marieke and Maarten when they went down the cabin for their well deserved sleep. This was exactly what it seemed like when we started our 2 to 5 am shift; like someone had been kind enough to leave a light on for us. A gorgeous moon lit up the entire ocean making it possible to make out shapes and see squalls come at you...Lovely!
The crew of the Bonte Koe is getting ready for landfall. It has been a great trip with many positive experiences. Also we learned & managed to cope with things that were not going our way.
In no way can we get close to the outstanding performance we had in 1995 where we finished after 17 days still in time for the early arrival party. No, this time it seemed we had to squeeze every mile out of the wind. We even had to sail upwind for a couple of hours on one night, we had periods of no wind but if you look at it closer we still managed to sail at least 113 miles even on our slowest day. I think when we will look back at this 2008 ARC adventure later we will have a greater sense of accomplishment than in 1995 where just everything went our way.
The latest predictions of us reaching land tomorrow is at approx 10.30 pm. It will be dark but I am sure someone will be kind enough to leave a light on for us...