Pace-Good; Morale-High; Food-Excellent; Scenery-Monotonous Sky-at night Fabulous
We are now 450 nautical miles West of The Cape Verde Islands with 1700 nm of open ocean ahead of us to get to St. Lucia. Sometime tomorrow we expect to pass the halfway point in the voyage from Gran Canaria but as we expect light winds in a few days time this is unlikely to be halfway in time.
We are of course not in a “race” but as always we are interested how we are progressing in relation to the rest..... in the last 24 hrs. we have moved up the rankings 9 places to 101. We are now closely monitoring our VMG (Velocity Made Good) to St Lucia and the weather patterns 3/4 days ahead to adapt our route to maximise our progress. It seems that finding the stronger winds will be the key and as always that is something of a gamble...
Three days and nights and not another vessel on A.I.S or in sight. It seems amazing that 230 yachts can leave the same port bound for the same port and yet we are alone in an enormous ocean.
Sailing downwind in big seas has proved rather too much for “Otto” (the 7th member of crew the autopilot) today so we have been helming by hand to improve the stability and speed of the boat.
We miss the spinnaker pole greatly damaged on day 4,it means we cant fly our twin headsail setup and is costing us about 3 kts. Wind is too strong for the big sails yet but we anticipate that we will need our coloured sails shortly.
Last night a flying fish hit the bananas skimmed my shoulder and landed on Dickies feet, he had just had a bad dream involving a rat crawling on his face. He took off across P.Js cockpit and you dont get far not when you have a safety harness on PANDEMONIUM.
I try and sleep in forward cabin, feel like a hamburger on a greasy pan and frequently get airborne whilst asleep. Hansel sleeps in the starboard aft cabin. The other four fight over the saloon. Blowfelt uses two sail ties to restrain himself on the settee .J.D and Charlie use the big sofa to starboard as best they can. Dickie says Otto is very noisy so has left aft cabin and jumps in as soon as a vacant saloon sofa is available.
Must go time for the Jonnie and Charlie Show. Somebody should put a TV cameraman on this boat we have got it all drama, mostly mine ashamed to say, comedy, tragedy-the spinnaker pole, fishing-2 tuna.
All well on Puddlejumper,hope all are well at home.
W.B