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Aretha - Day 4, Caribbean Sea - 12 35 North, 69 47 West



22:11 Local Time.
We’re 10 miles off the East Coast of Aruba. Trying to remember the title of the Beach Boys song…Aruba, Jamaica etc etc. Back when I heard the song, Aruba was a far off place. Now it’s a series of lights including a long line of red flashing lights on our port side and it comes to life as you study it on the charts. Ditto for Curacao - Blue Curacao now has a different meaning.

Had a look earlier at the chart plotter and its amazing to see how far we’ve come since we left Southampton 5 months ago today. So many places, so many experiences - The South Coast of England, France, Spain, Portugal, Madeira, The Canaries, St Lucia, the Grenadines and now past the Venezualan coastline and Columbia and Panama appearing just ahead of us on the charts.

We’re loving all the feedback and emails from you all - thank you - the whole crew are (amazingly) silent and listen to all the messages as they get read out over supper. Laughs of the day go to Max’s description of corporate life and the cold weather deliberations.

Life on board continues - 2 huge pods of dolphins today. Bluebell and Columbus both hanging over the bows (all clipped on of course) as we surfed down the waves at 8 knots surrounded by these beautiful creatures. They both dangled hands in the water and were there for what seemed like an hour as the dolphins rolled over to look at them as they played in the surf. Bluebell is convinced she touched one of them as it came out of the water. Willow sat in the cockpit content with Caroline to watch them from there and enjoyed them just as much as we all did.

No fishing today. Fridge still packed with Tuna so holding fire before we re-stock.

Plenty of shipping today - tankers and container ships. We called 3 on the VHF to make sure they had seen us. All very friendly and all altered course to avoid us. Still no other yachts sighted. A very different picture to the Caribbean.

Tonight after we pass to the North of Aruba we pass the Gulf of Venezuala and then we are into Columbian waters.

The breeze is good - built now to 20 knots and up to 40 ahead of us. Still sailing with headsail poled out and now one reef in the main. Watching the barometer carefully - it fell 3.5 Mb in one hour earlier - cause enough to reef but fortunately the breeze didn’t step up a gear.

George (the generator) still out of action. Thank you for the suggestions - we haven’t cracked it yet and continue to work through the list. We ran the engine earlier to charge the batteries and are being careful to preserve amps.

All is settled and the crew are happy. A happy ship is a good ship.

Over and out from Team Aretha.



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