Wild Goose - Unabridged musings. Cape Verde to Grenada

Sorry! Having spent you 14 emails this morning, I thought it might be easier to put them all together ….so here goes!The big one! Wild Goose musings…(We had no ability to send emails from the boat, so all these are coming to you now!)So finally the day dawned for the start!We were more or less ready and actually had quite a relaxed morning with phone calls to everyone at home and a last breakfast ashore in the cafe, but many others had engineers and riggers aboard till the very last moment, still more would have to wait for a day or so before all the repairs could be completed. The marina is rather complex not having any finger pontoons so we had to leave in turn with two of the marina staff in a rather decrepit dingy coming and untying our bow lines which had disappeared under water. read more...

Wild Goose - Day 11

I am writing this morning from the foredeck.  It is by far the ‘coolest’ place on the boat. First it is in the shade, the sails casting a shadow, secondly the wind can blow across your skin to keep you cool, thirdly because the gush and swish of the bowwave is just beneath you, and we are tramping it is just a really cool place to be! So yesterday we gybed twice after a great deal of very serious discussion about tactics.  The first time we decided that it was time to go South to make use of an Easterly wind which we knewwould today turn to the North East.  Faultless logic and for a while it seemed to work, but then just as it was getting dark the wind forced us to head ever more south to the extent that we were 45 degrees off the rumb line…so we gybed back.  Again. read more...

Wild Goose - Day 13.

This morning dawned with a brief tropical down pour, followed by a spectacular rainbow.   The night had seen us in close proximity to four other boats.  It seems our courses are now converging as we near Grenada.  Sadly the winds are mostly light so those who have not blown their spinnakers have a definite advantage and we could only fumeas they crept ahead of us and their light disappeared into the gloom.  The one boat that we have held onto, and finally this morning overhauled is our neighbour from the marina in Cape Verde, Blue Pearl.  Strange that after 2000 miles we will finish withina few minutes of each other as we did on the first leg from Las Palmas. None the less it was a lovely night of sailing.  The moon, still near full, did not rise until. read more...

Wild Goose - Day 12

We really feel we are getting close…can almost hear a steel band on the wind.  We had a splendid night of sailing with 15-20kts of wind blowing us almost directly towards the island.  Our rig of main to port, Genoa to starboard and staysail to port seems to work really well in this sort of wind speed and it is gratifyingto learn that the two boats to the immediate north of us were both flying spinnakers all night and failed to make any ground on us at all. Interestingly we believe two of them have now blown these sails in a 30kt gust that hit them directly in the early hoursand must have passed a few miles to the north of us.  We did however get a little rain which gave the decks a good wash and also resulted in James’s feet getting a wash before he was able to. read more...

Wild Goose - Day 10

Welcome to another day in paradise!  Another great sun rise after a night of full moon sailing.  The day started very well with Simon’s delicious scrambled eggs and the last of the bacon, all washed down with good strong fresh ground coffee. This I consider essential, although James thinks Simon and I are nuts and should be perfectly content with Gold Blend. I sometimes wonder what planet  he is from!We then all sat down with the latest weather forecasts and routing advice and had a lengthy debate about our course.  All through the last three days we have been convincing ourselves that we have been sailing close to the rhumb line of 272 degrees butwhen you look at the plot of our position on the paper chart it is clear that we have been  steadily drifting. read more...