Kelpie - Thursday 6 December 2018

> 14:47.3N 54:14.1W
>
> Well that was interesting. Overnight we got hit by 2 violent squalls in
> the space of three hours. These are "black" squalls that strike with
> very little warning and the wind on the leading edge is 35 to 40 knots
> (Gale Force 8 to Severe Gale Force 9) with a 30 degree wind shift. The
> wind subsides after about 25 minutes and slowly returns to the trade wind
> after about 40 minutes. At the moment there is no moon so you can only
> see them coming by the stars going dark as it clouds over; this means we
> get about 5 minutes warning only. In both cases we were able to get the
> genoa furled in time and handle Kelpie under her already reefed main.
> Kelpie, of course, handed it beautifully and remained easy to steer
> throughout - she really is a lovely design for this sort of sailing.
>
> Our watches are now 3 hours behind the UK which is why this blog is
> published later in the day - we have our little routine aboard Kelpie
> where we do the emails after our lunch including getting weather
> forecast - We then have a big debate about what sail plan we need for the
> night ahead - Andrew has built some brilliant tools on his iPad to tell us
> what our VMG (velocity made good) would be in various scenarios . Thus
> far this process has served us well and we clung onto our second place and
> even clawed back some miles from the leader in the past 24 hours. Our
> noon to noon run (local time) was 146 miles.
>
> Then we write the blog which will arrive on the website in the early
> evening in the UK
>
> Gina has been forwarding some of the comments on the WhatsApp - thank you
> everybody for your brilliant support. We have a tentative ETA for
> sometime during daylight on Sunday (local time which in St Vincent is 5
> hours behind the UK). Once we get organised with local WiFi etc, we
> should be able catch up with all of you then.
>
> D