My second night was horrible sleep wise, with little to none off that note for me, however the night sky was clear as day. When Menno took the rudder I lay down in the sideboard of the yacht to admire the start constellations above.
Noticing we were right underneath Leo and Virgo I felt my sweetheart back home watching over us.
After a brief nap with that in mind I woke to spot the Woolamai, a Bavaria Ocean 38, on our AIS. This was a great surprise as Pietertje was the last yacht to start late with us on Monday afternoon. Contrary to most contestants, who started
a full day earlier on Sunday. Did we really have the race pace to catch up with the stragglers from the pack already?!
Hell yes we were! Remmert shared a YB overview of us just behind the entire main group!! Fuelled with excitement Menno and I womped out the womper at sight of first light. Waking Michiel and Hein in the process in time for a weather
update and crossing strategy. As the wind picked up we saw the Woolamai eat our spray as we ate our breakfast in turns watching the wobbly womper (beamed out, almost in front of the wind with little of it requires some attention as faults are punished with
a “bra” folded sail).
The wind and temperature picked up quickly after this, paving the way for another day of terrific steady sunny sailing, reading, checking all lines, levers and shekels. After lunch we decided to refit our Jon Buoy (google). A necessity
as we noticed it would be hard to launch Jon with our new life-raft in front of it. This exercise however, by 5mm, led to the launch of dear Jon..
For me it was crash and nap time after this only to be woken for the borrel 3 hours later at 5. After this and some family update calling we had the highlight of the trip so far.
Out of nowhere there were dolphins popping up behind, next to and in front of us! As I walked to the front of the boat some started to jump 2 meters up out of the water. By the time I was at the front there were dozens of them all around
and literally 10 right underneath my feet, like playful puppies, leading us right towards the setting sun. They stated doing bellyflops and as if sitting on the point with this view wasn’t enough we saw more and more coming from far starboard. Like torpedoes
horizontally popping out of waves at immense speeds to join our popping and flopping dolphin army on the hunt for our competition, the sun and of course: Saint Lucia!
Half an hour past and they were still popping and flopping as we lowered the orange womper and set the milk maiden (jibbed out genoa and main sheet on the bulletalie). Men and I again took the first night shift. With new insights from
Remmert I believe we saw the top light of Wubbels, a Bavaria 430 Caribic. Even with streaming light on (under engine) this wasn’t a match for our white maiden.
Went to bed at 3am, woke at 8 and first sight out of the window: dolphins chasing flying fish
🐟🐬