Another brilliant sailing day in moderate easterly trade winds. Another gloriously sunny, hot, day, in our sparkling blue world. Definitely our world as we have not even seen another boat on AIS since December 1st. Only looking at YB tracker can we “see”, on a phone screen anyway, other boats around us. We have had birds circling us though, so some signs of life,
Been another day of watching for squalls, wind varying up and down, and reefs going in, and coming out of, the headsails. The sea has its moments, but it has moderated too. We put the ships clocks back another hour. Now running at GMT - 4 which is Grenada/Caribbean time. The day passes so easily and quickly, even with 25 hours in it. Frances Louise continues to cream along superbly, taking the waves in her stride, without breakages or undue wear or tear, and we continue to enjoy the ride in complete admiration of her. Not much further to go now. We should arrive the day after tomorrow. We are easily within motoring distance. Whilst not wishing to tempt fate we can begin to relax a little about what could go wrong and what planned back up systems we may have to revert to.
What drama we did have came later in the day. I wash up once a day, to save water, at around tea time. I was busy at the sink when something wet hit me on the back of the calf. It was a live flying fish that must have been trying to leap the boat, not quite made it, and come in through the open hatch! It flapped around on the saloon floor. Hero David managed to scoop it up and through it overboard.
Night time - which started at 1730 - was not so easy. The wind swung into the north east and we could not lay our direct course, so lots of course adjustments, as the wind shifted, to try and follow the best course. Then, at 3am, it swung into the south east and a big squall went through. That was at watch hand over time so we were both up to deal with it. After that the normal easterly wind, up and down in force for a while, resumed.