25/01 @ 1933 16'59.74N 050'24.44W What a night we've had, it didn't stop raining until 0345. When we say raining, it wasn't your casual summer time UK drizzle, we're talking about standing in a shower on full power getting absolutely drenched kind of rain. It was nuts! Once that had passed, the winds came in and thank God they did. Since then we have had a good strong consistent wind of 12-16kts gusting up to 20-23 at times from the north-east to south-east direction. Max speed so far has been 10.5 on a surf off a wave. Still goose winging it right now, we're going to keep like this for the night and at day light we'll bring the pole down, furl away the headsail and unleash The Beast as the conditions will be perfect for it. Having now passed 50 degrees west we're definitely making up for lost time. Morale was really boosted by our day of solid sailing and our ever closing approach to our destination. Once we're into the last few days you can bet that the excitement of getting in a bar and on to a white sandy beach will be rife through us all. But now lets get back to our crew bios. Next on our list is our skipper. Chris Line Age: 56 Height: 5'11'' Eye Colour: Brown Hair colour: Brown Now I know in previous bios we have stated that without certain crew members we would be unable to complete the journey, that the mere presence of them has allowed us to experience this once in a lifetime voyage. It's not to say that those statements weren't true, just that without Chris we literally wouldn't be doing this. His natural ability to lead from the front with a balanced view and careful consideration makes him an excellent and well respected skipper. I will point out that the three weeks (hopefully less) of this passage are the result of his years of preparation, through COVID variants, crew changes, boat upgrades, all while aiming to get the most out of the experience. His ability to see the big picture is one of his biggest strengths and can be seen with our management of fuel for example, which gave us the ability to gun it back the way we came a few days ago to pick up our additional crew members, while still having hopefully enough left to finish the crossing. As his son, and prodigy, I can confirm he has no weaknesses. We as a crew are some of the luckiest with the boat he has entered into this rally; I'm not sure there's much more you can do to a Jeanneau 54! His generosity does not go unnoticed and I have no doubt he will find himself a few rum punches on arrival. So there you have it, our third crew bio. The staple of What's Next. Till tomorrow, Jacob and Joe
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