Flat calm, no wind - engine has been on all day. Whilst not perhaps the
ideal finish to the ARC, at least it means we will be in for Saturday jazz
and should be nicely rested and showered as we have plenty of hot water now.
We currently have 140 miles to go (as at 14:15 UTC / 10:15 Local Time) and
are doing 7 kts so tomorrow morning looks likely. It looks like being a busy
finish as a number of boats in our division should be arriving within a few
hours of each other.
You can tell we are getting close as the crew are starting to look at the
Carribean guides and talking about staying in a hotel.....maybe they are
subtely trying to tell us something! I must admit that some of the
restaurants are looking very good.
Boat-wise things are good. So far we've had no major mechanical or
electrical issues. The generator has started playing up, probably due to a
fuel supply problem from blocked filters; if so its an easy enough job to
fix but I can't do it whilst the main engine is running so we'll leave that
to Rodney Bay. The fuel guage is playing up - seems to think we have full
tanks after 2 days of motoring - but I think we'll finish with 130 litres of
fuel left (out of 525 litres) and have just put the last of the jerries into
the tank to make sure. And the engine bay fan has finally packed up but has
been on its last legs for a while.
If we make it in tomorrow morning we'll do a final update and also upload
some of the photos. We might have a photo later today of the crew swimming
off the boat in 4 miles of water.
Also, we had probably our final radio net call today. This has been great
fun all the way across and its been nice to know that there are other yachts
out there even if they are just beyond the horizon. Actually with SSB the
range has been 200-300 miles which has been excellent. A big thank you to
the net controllers on Hanami, Chiscos, Matilda and Halcyon of Hebe.
The champagne is in the fridge in anticipation....
Tony