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Firefly - Rock and roll Monday



Monday morning broke to a beautiful warm and sunny day out in the ocean. If the Boomtown Rats had experienced Monday mornings like these they wouldn't have had the inspiration for their hit single! We were accompanied last night with more dolphins and a star filled sky punctuated by shooting stars. Sunday's Northerly wind stayed with us all night, peaking at 25 knots. We have been broad reaching and have posted our best noon to noon run so far at 178 miles. The slight sea state of the first few days has developed and while we are going faster, we are now really rocking and rolling. Life on board is however manageable, its warm enough for tee shirts and shorts in the cockpit by day, a light sweatshirt being required for night watches. Our food and water is holding up well. Sausage baps for lunch and Paul cooked a fruity Chicken Curry last night with numerous different ingredients, including a fresh mango. It must have been good as every morsel was finished and eating in the cockpit in the evening twilight Peter was spotted scraping the flag motif off his bowl thinking it was more curry!

Its been reasonably busy shipping wise today, we have just changed course to avoid a tanker heading North and over on our starboard side there is another yacht sailing parallel to us. Considering the Atlantic Ocean is such a large expanse of water, it seems remarkably crowded at times. On Murray's watch night we saw five vessels, only 2 of which were transmitting their AIS identity. Two of the unidentified vessels appeared to be fishing vessels. The third was very small, slow and was quite close. Possibly rowers? Almost at the same time a dolphin decided to put in an appearance, skipping along the surface like a rib, finishing with a leap clear of the water.

Our Grib files, downloaded from sailmail via the SSB radio tell us that we will run into a light patch of wind off the Cape Verdes in a few days time. We can't see a way of avoiding it and at present are planning to track along the classic Southern route to the West Indies. If you take a look at the yellowbrick - from where we are at about midday on Monday - we will go another 600nm on the current course of about 240 degrees and then when about 250nm WNW of the Western Cape Verdes we will veer our course to aim straight for Antigua keeping close to a latitude of 18 degrees North. Although we are facing a light spell we have chosen to go South to try and get the best of the trade winds, often not that well established at this time of the year.

Paul, Murray, Peter and Grateful (might be pining for Grateful too)

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