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Taistealai - Anticipation & The Penguin's Big Adventure



Anticipation

Tues 08 December

Our ARC voyage is almost over; just 30nm to run to the finish line in Rodney Bay, Saint Lucia. Since first light this morning there has been a real sense of anticipation on board Tashy as we watched the DTF drop lower and lower. Big blue, our large spinnaker went up at 7am and since then we've been surging forward at 8.5 knots. Gybe angles are a constant topic of conversation; we cannot lay the north end of the island at our current angle so need to gybe, but when to go? Close behind are our rivals on Alpaire, an Irish HR48. We have had a couple of friendly chats with them on the radio net and are now looking forward to seeing them on the dock in Saint Lucia, as long as they finish behind us of course!

The Penguin's Big Adventure

Our loyal readers have been clamouring for news of the penguin. Who is this mystery crew member they ask. Well, we can now reveal that the penguin is one of several office mascots normally residing in the World Cruising Club office in Cowes. Two of them - Sailor Ted and Ed the Iguana, regularly cross with the ARC as mascots on family boats. Poor penguin was feeling very left-out by this and decided to stowaway in Jem's bag for the crossing. Once on board he has been using his non existent sailing knowledge of offer frequent, but mainly useless advice to our skipper. The high point of the voyage for penguin was the day we landed our two large dorado. Penguin's eyes popped out (metaphorically) when he saw the size of these beauties! Sadly as he does not have a passport, we will need to smuggle penguin into Saint Lucia then home again to the UK, unless he meets a nice local Agooti and decides to set up home in the Caribbean!


This is the crew of Taistealai siging off for a morning of intense spinnaker trimming at 13 58N 060 33W and 25nm to go!
Chris, Helen, Will, Jem and the penguin

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