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Mustique - Day 2 - First Log - Oh, for wind!!



Thought I would take the opportunity to write the first log of this passage to St Lucia and introduce the crew onboard Yacht Mustique.

Firstly however, I have to say that as I am writing this, we are NOT making any progress towards our goal of St Lucia, just under 2700 miles away. We are sitting in a great big wind hole and have been doing so since the early hours of this morning. It is very frustrating, but unfortunately that is an element of ocean sailing that is not easy to adjust to, but we have to get used to it!

Anyway, all is well onboard. No sea sickness so far and everyone is well rested and fed. We had a great ‘racing’ start yesterday over the line just off the city of Las Palmas and were definitely in the leading end of the racing pack. We decided to stay very close to the shore line of the island as we progressed our way south This was in line with the decision made earlier on to go around the bottom of the island and cross the ‘wind shadow zone’ so as to gain a westerly or Rhum Line route to St Lucia, as the forecast is for very light winds on the more traditional southerly route. We cleared Maspalomas Light house about 1800 and eventually moved out of the wind shadow zone about 2230, picking up fresh breeze channeling through the gap between Gran Canaria and Tenerife. The allowed us to make good progress to the southern end of Tenerife, but unfortunately, thats where the wind died and where we are now sitting and wallowing in the waves that still exist. Oh well, hopefully it will fill in soon.

Anyway, i promised Introductions. Apart from myself, we also have onboard Mustique’s full time mate, Stefan from Montenegro. This year, we are joined by Anders from Denmark, Carol of the States, Mark and David from SE UK and Tom and his daughter Olivia, also from the UK.

Yesterday was the start day of the ARC and it was also Olivia’s 13th Birthday, which we celebrated in style on the dockside before leaving the marina, with a big birthday cake and some presents.

One final crew member onboard needs an introduction, but right now she is too busy looking for dolphins to pay attention to anything else that is going on onboard; YUKI is a small white terrier dog that is proudly sporting her safety harness and ‘Dog Over Board’ notification device, as she bounces around the deck.

Hopefully, over the coming days and weeks, we will be able to report better progress than today and also tell you a few stories of the adventures onboard - so until tomorrow…

Signing off

Fin

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