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Firefly - Racing with spinnakers up, mid South Atlantic



It is Wednesday  25th January and we had a good first night at sea moving at about 5.5 knots on average, more than we expected from the forecast. During our first 24 hours we managed about 135 miles, about 3 hours of that under engine. 
 
Mearra Neida, the Finnish World ARC boat came up behind us quickly at about 1100 this morning with their spinnaker up – so there was nothing else for it but to get our gennaker out. Now we are going very fast, but are heading just a bit south of our required course which is almost due west to Salvador. In fact we are heading for Rio de Janiero but at this stage its the speed that counts and the great circle route does take us south anyway.
 
Mearra Neida is a little longer than Firefly and dare we say it – even more sporty - so they did gradually haul us in and get to within 100 metres. Theirs is a normal spinnaker so they can sail a bit lower on the wind than we can - so having got close and taken a photo (we hope) they headed off on their preferred course and are now, at about 1600,  3 miles further north.  It is actually unusual to see other yachts on passage even on a rally so we doubt we will see them again.
 
We had a radio net this morning and managed to contact all the boats currently underway. Carango and Into the Blue are relatively nearby having left about the same time. Resolute and Trillium are 300 miles ahead as they left 2.5 days before us. Despite being in ‘racing’ trim we are making water today – the washing water is reasonably full but we ran low on drinking. Firefly has separate tanks with the pressurised system for washing and manual hand pumps for drinking - a good system. Plus we also carry plenty of spare drinking water in a couple of jerry cans as well as the ubiquitous bottles of mineral water stored in all kinds of places, some under the floor.
 
Unusually the predicted dates are slightly off on the programme for this part of the WARC. The programme indicated that the expectation was for the leading the yachts to leave St Helena on Tuesday 24th (which we did). And then arrive on Tuesday 31st – that would be just 7 days for 1900 miles in an area of lighter winds! Quite a few people booked flights based on the programme, including Gareth, without checking the detail. So its going to be a bit fine. However we think it will take us 12 to 13 days so will be in with a day or more to spare before his flight out on February 7th. In fact we are anticipating good winds from now until Sunday and will then get a light spell from Monday to Wednesday. We have plenty of fuel so will motor if we can’t keep up a reasonable speed when it goes light.
 
Our food provisioning and preparation has started well – our first 2 lunches came from the doggy bag we took after the Charabanc Tour on our last night at St Helena. Peter cooked an excellent sausage, vegetable and pasta caserole and Gareth is resting at present in preparation for undertaking a prawn stir fry this evening.
 
It is lovely out here today and no doubt the weather is considerably better than it is at home in England. However, as Firefly is on the last but one long stretch the World ARC Paul is really looking forward to the shorter distances Firefly will have to cover once we reach the Caribbean and then spending summer of 2017 at home in the UK. However for now its best not to think about how far it is to Grenada – about 4000 miles from here!
 
Paul, Peter and Gareth
 


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