Blake - sunrises and croissants

Sunrises at sea are pretty cool.A long drawn out affair of color that keeps you intrigued and wanting to see more.Menacing looking clouds at night reveal themselves as fluffy white cotton balls in the day.Sunrise and sunset are to the south of us still, I guess we are approaching the winter solstice when they will start to work their way further north.We should look up when the sun will be directly overhead in the Caribbean, pretty cool thing to google ‘Lahaina Noon’.That’s what they call it in Hawaii when the ‘cruel sun’ is directly overhead and it has the affect of casting no shadows at noon, spooky, check it out.We opened the last bag of frozen croissants from Carrefour and popped 'em in the oven this morning, nice.The 12V Dometic freezer we put in has been pretty epic, it was chock. read more...

Blake - Moonsets & carrot cake

We needed some help from our support team ashore today, no not on the weather or a rigging issue...but to have google translate a Spanish recipe on the carrot cake mix!After a small delay and a destroyed galley (carrot peelings and gratings everywhere) the girls turned out a pretty bomb carrot cake.It did have a funny shape to it in the pan tho, skinny at one end and fat at the other I guess despite the stove being gimbaled the mix favored one end.Had some fun with the asymmetric gennaker flying that off the bowsprit today, it’s bright orange which casts the boat in a pleasant shadow.As sunset approaches it’s tempting to keep it up and fly it at night but that would be added stress bringing it down in a hurry in the dark, no thanks.After the sunsets come the moonsets, getting slowly. read more...

Blake - Full Circle

The beauty of a nightwatch is you get a lot of time to think about stuff, where you are, where you’ve been and maybe scheme what’s next. We’ve probably done a few full circles out here as we turn into the wind to either put in, or shake out, a reef on the mainsail but I was thinking more of how this ARC feels like a full circle is about to be completed.So I had sailed across in ARC 2011 aboard ‘Felicity J’ a Dufour 385 owned by a cool Aussie family and at the final ARC prizegiving in Saint Lucia I first met Katie.Katie had flown down to visit her friends who had also sailed across on their own boat and well the rest they say is history!10 years on and it feels pretty special to be sailing together aboard ‘Blake’ with our two daughters Iwalani & Anela and headed back to Saint Lucia.A lot. read more...

Blake - total gridlock

I think in the past 24hrs we have only seen 2 other sailboats on the horizon and they were both also on the AIS, headed the same general direction but looked to be non rally boats.I think this year will be a busy one for boats crossing as it sounds like a lot had delayed their trips from last year.We also had a non-rally boat the other day give us a DSC call, which was a first for us, nice to chat with them, a Lagoon 77 - we asked if they could drop off some ice cubes as they overtook us!With a DSC call your VHF starts ringing like an incoming phone call until you hit ok, then the boat calling you is already on channel 72, no need to call on vhf 16 and change channels.When you hear other boats on channel 16 call up someone else and then switch channels, I always think it’s funny as I can. read more...

Blake - hello mainsail

Several days back with a triple reefed main we managed to catch the top batten in the shrouds and when bringing the sails down it put a tear in the luff of the mainsail, probably a 2ft strip where the bolt rope was ripped off the sail and still attached to the sliders.Bit annoying but it meant we were just under jib for the heavier weather/squalls, probably not a bad thing as easier and quicker to reef the jib in and out.We finally had some time on calmer seas, about an hour yesterday and another 2-3 hours this morning, to make some repairs.With some yellow sail repair tape and some Frankenstein stitching we were able to get a pretty good hold.Nice to get the mainsail back up and put in a touch more boat speed.Working on some paper chains and snowflakes to add to the festive decorations. read more...