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Saturday was another beautiful day of sailing even though the winds lightened as the day progressed. Just before lunch I noticed a sail pretty far ahead in the distance. We all commented about how big the sails looked and wondered if we’d have any chance to catch her. Well, as it turned out, we were on a near parallel, but eventually, intersecting course that lead us together after about an hour. Our big yacht that we were chasing had metamorphosed into a tiny 30’ sailboat named ‘Django’ with a French husband and wife aboard as only crew. For comparison sake, the smallest boat in this rally is 39’ and that is about twice the size of a 30’ when you consider practical living conditions. It was a real reminder of how big this ocean is. When there is nothing to be seen in 360 degrees for three straight days, even I tiny sailboat looks big on the horizon. The other thing it is a reminder of is that some people are just flat out crazy.

That little boat was rocking and rolling like a bobber on a fishing pole on a windy day. When we were about 500 yards astern of her the VHF radio came alive with a heavily accented Frenchman hailing us. I can imagine what was on his mind for the last mile of our approach as TARA charged towards him splitting off a bow wave in both directions that would swamp this toy of a boat. As with most Europeans that we have met in the last 18 months, his English was very good and he relayed his request that we not run over his fishing line (and/or boat) and he requested that we photograph each other’s boats while passing so that we could have interesting souvenirs for the future when we exchange the photos via E-mail. Little did he know that we had a professional photographer in Christopher aboard so he will certainly be pleased when he opens the E-mail. We passed him with about 30 feet of distance between us. We made plans to swap stories over drinks in Horta, 1200 miles down the wet path. Well, I’m sure he will have stories that I’d love hear, I’m just not sure he will make it Horta before Christmas. Cheers to the French, the most fearless sailors around!


We hit the dead wind line late yesterday and the winds died completely. We tried going north by motoring for 5 hours to get more winds. That worked, as we sailed from 2am until about noon today but the wind(less) line caught us again and we decided that motoring east for the next 24-36 hours into the next favorable wind pattern would be a better idea. So, we fired up the engine and took off eastward for the long motor and low and behold the winds kicked in again south of the wind line. That wasn’t supposed to happen so we are back to sailing and heading east at about 4-1/2 to 5 knots. Not terribly fast, but we are happy for the peace and quiet and we are trying to conserve fuel for the 2nd half of the trip. It looks as though a huge high pressure system is sitting much more to the north than usual and that could mean really light winds or winds from the wrong direction again. (This isn’t supposed to happen in May) It really makes me think of the French couple again because while we have 300 gallons of fuel, I’d be shocked if they have more than 30 gallons. They will have to deal with whatever the weather brings them. Me, once we get close enough to no longer have to manage our fuel supplies, I won’t sit wallowing in light winds waiting for a low pressure system to come kick us hard in the pants. Lisa and I just read a book from a very experienced delivery skipper and he ranked his top all-time worst storms (btw, all 10 were horrendous) and #4 on his list happened just 40 miles off Horta. That is all I need to remember to make haste towards landfall.


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