On paper, our position continues to suck! We have deliberately worked south. But St. Lucia is west. So after 6 days of sailing, we have really only made 2,300 nm towards our ultimate goal. But sailing is sometimes not about going directly in the direction you would like to. Sometimes the quickest way isn't necessarily the shortest.
We are banking this is one of those times!
Some of the boats in our class are headed west more directly towards St. Lucia. In fact, I was emailed that we have reached the illustrious status of 20th out 20 boats inclass....and 166 in our division (out of approximately 170! The way we see it, things can only get better! :-) In
fact, we think we know what we are doing, we have put a strategy together, and we are implementing the strategy.
Unsettled weather in the N. Atlantic is wreaking havoc on the trades further south. Consequently, we have been forced to dive much further south than we originally thought, or that prudence would normally dictate. But these are not normal times! We have finally turned right at the 16th parallel, and barring any more holes in the way of our progress, fully expect to make our way west over the next two weeks.
This track should allow us to sail in the trades with the spinnaker. Boats to the north of us may get lucky and find the right wind angle to get there before us. That is up to the wind gods, and there is plenty of track left for that to happen or not. We decided pretty early on that we did not want to take a northern track because that might result in several days of beating into the wind. We would love to win this thing in our class, but first and foremost we want to have fun. And beating relentlessly for days on end does NOT sound like fun! So that is why we have tacked on an extra few hundred miles to our track.
We are presently skipping along, as we have all along, with the kite up. Life aboard has settled into routines. One of my favourite activities is to put my iPod on and go up to the bow pulpit. I can sit on the roller furler and put my feet on the pulpit. From there, I can almost see St. Lucia 2,500 nm away!! The vista is so grand and expansive! The sky, the water, all of God's creation and I am smack dab in the middle of it. It is both awesome and humbling. Sometimes I just look down into the deep blue water and imagine how deep it goes. Everything is on such a magnanimous scale!! Other times I just watch the bow slice through the water -- to UB40, Bruce Springsteen, or the Grateful Dead.
It doesn't get much better than that!