Yet again another beautiful warm night at sea with a big increase in shipping traffic passing by.
06.00hrs Distance to Salvador................................141 miles. We are getting close to Brazil, we should arrive there around midnight tonight.
We adjusted all our clocks and watches for the 3rd time since leaving St. Helena, so we are now in Brazil time zone.
07.00hrs (local Brazilian time) RADIO CALL :- today, the net controller was shared between Thor VI and Mike from Eowyn. We gained an average of 20 miles per boat on the fleet over the last 24 hours, except for Wild Tigris who motored and is now 74 miles ahead of A Lady.
Shortly after radio call, the wind almost vanished, so we had to start the engine and motor westwards. It was a beautiful day, very hot, but not a cloud in the Sky. The fishing was not good. Lunch was salmon (the tinned variety) mixed with Mayonnaise on toasted bread, yum, yum,
The wind increased later in the afternoon to about 10/12 knots from behind, but we decided to keep motor sailing and be sure of our ETA , after all Paul and Suzana from World ARC promised they would wait up for us and give us a hand when we arrive at the marina. We are now coming to the end of another big milestone, crossing the Southern Ocean.
19.00hrs We had a fantastic sunset, and you must have heard of the mythical "Green Flash" as the last bit of the sun goes down over the Horizon (well, we never heard of it until this trip). Many of the sailors we met spoke of the green flash, but only a few ever saw it. We thought we saw it twice crossing the Pacific, but were not really sure of that, it could have been our imagination playing tricks. Skipper was explaining all this to Sham and Emily, just as the last bit of the sun sank into the sea and guess what... The GREEN FLASH, and no question about it this time, a real vivid green flash as that last bit of sun turned green for a split second. Wow! that is another one for the books, and something else for us all to remember about this Leg.
As darkness fell over the sea, we began to see lights on the horizon, BRAZIL.... Ohhhh, how exciting, we had already emailed our ETA to rally control, so they are expecting us, as already mentioned above.
The lights grew bigger and bigger and closer as we had dinner. Very tasty marinated chicken cutlets which we had in the deep freeze since Australia, plus bacon and cabbage mixed through the creamed potatoes, with the last of the carrots. It was different and all enjoyed our last dinner at sea together, we also finished off the small drop of Rum and tonic that was left on board.
We radioed Paul as we approached the finish line, the time of the finish was in Cape Town time. We were now only a few hundred yards off shore as we scooted past the beaches and high rise buildings on our starboard side, we watched all this new horizon with great interest, we will be there shortly.
Having crossed the finish line, we made our way into Salvador's huge harbour and headed for the marina, following the instructions we were given earlier. Every one on board was excited, just another 15 minutes, and we will be there at the marina, and sure enough, we were.
Paul, Suzana and Sean from Wild Tigris were there to greet us, help tie us alongside the marina and give us a few welcome drinks. Great, all done....
We enjoyed the next hour or so, polishing off as much wine as we could manage and eventually hit the scratchers.
That's it for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde ( Skipper )