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Free Spirit - 28 Nov Richie's log



25 Nov to 28Nov (Richie’s log)

I am writing this at 10:00 on 28th Nov. The sea has a completely calm, flat, mirror-glass look about it this morning and the air is totally still. Having had an uncomfortable, rocky night last night, we are now in the doldrums. We are heading in a south, south westerly direction to try and catch the trade winds which will take us across to the Caribbean. DOLPHINS! … a large pod of dolphins just appeared about 100 metres away but they didn'’t come and play – just going about their daily business… We are about 280 nautical miles west of a place called Nouadhlbou on the west coast of the Sahara and have travelled 530NM, mostly south from Gran Canaria. TURTLE! … a little turtle was just swimming along 3 metres away aahhh … and we are about 300NM north of the Cape Verde islands. We have set our way-point to the north west corner of the Verdes, this is where we are hoping to pick up the trade winds.

We can see another sail about 5NM away on the starboard beam. It is interesting to chart the positions of the other  ARC boats – from the daily emails we receive. The leading boat, Monster Project, is already about one quarter of the way across the Atlantic! Amazing, and this is without even using their engine – the racing divisions can’t! Monster project has adopted a completely different strategy to ours, perhaps to avoid the doldrums, they are much further north and seem to be taking a rhum line to St. Lucia. Albatross is about 200NM north west of us. Reassuringly, there are still lot of other boats aiming for Cape Verde, the leading boat amongst these is Red Cat (not in the racing division – they were on the other side of Albatross in Las Palmas). Red Cat is about 120NM (about a day) ahead of us.

We saw three whales this afternoon. They were half a mile to a mile away, coming up to the surface and blowing spouts of water. From Andy’s marine life book, which his girlfriend Jo, a marine biologist lent him, we think they could have been fin whales, up to 15 metres long. This was the second sighting of whales since we left Gran Canaria, the first sighting we have identified as being a minke whale. We have had lots of visits by dolphins coming to play, from Andy’s book, they were all Atlantic spotted dolphins. Other marine life we have seen to date are flying fish, a few birds, and the phosphorescence at the side of the boat at night.


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