Saturday 1st December - Sunday 2nd December 2012
Position @ 1200hrsGMT - 2.12.12 ; 20' 39 N, 029' 38' W
miles in last 25 hours; 210
Ian, Annie and Frank see in the dawn with a bottle of Rose Cava to celebrate Ian and Annie's wedding anniversary. It's still quite cloudy after a squally night but a beautiful morning nevertheless. Crew (most!) helmed all night due to the malunction of the autohelm on starboard and the squally conditions. Gusts up to 35 knots - quite constant at 30 for most of the night. We see 2 yachts, one heading south and one which we overtake to starboard. A cargo ship also passes to stern en route to St Petersburg. The clouds clear throughout the morning and we soon have a sunny blue sky, now in the trade winds with the familiar puffy white clouds. We hook 2 fish this morning but still fail to land any....probably going too fast. We continue on a course of 310'/320' and have a relaxing day in the sun. At approximately 1700hrs GMT we decide to gibe south as the wind has veered round to a more easterly direction. We're delighted as we now appear to be almost bang on the rum line for St Lucia. During the gibe the fishing line gets caught round the rudder so there is much amusement for the rest of the crew over the next half hour or so as boys will be boys Ronnie and Frank (Mc Phail and Sunny Jim) try to retrieve it - eventually successfully. We're now on a steady 8/10 knots on a course of 280' magnetic.
The sun comes out again and the crew has a wee celebration - 2000 miles to go. Later, Ronnie puts on the generator which immediately fails se we run the engine all night to maintain some of the charge in the batteries. We continue on our course throughoiut the night - a clear moonlight with shooting stars all around. Hallelujiah! In the morning the crew awaken to find that the determination of McPhail and Sunny Jim has won the day again - the generator is fixed. Another plus - we've landed our first fish - of the flying variety!