Hi All,
So an interesting last 24 hours, yesterday the sunshine finally broke and we had cloudy skies, punctuated by regular squalls (gusting 25-3Kts) and heavy rain showers. Fortunately you can track the squalls as they close up behind you via the radar (picture attached), so we were largely able reef the headsails in advance and to change course by a few degrees and have them pass down one side or the other of us, however there were a couple we couldn't avoid and both John and Tony got soaked by them during their watches..
On the plus side however the strong winds did mean we covered over 170NM yesterday and this means we crashed through the 1000NM barrier and we now only have around 815 NM left to run as I type this, so only a short distance to go relatively speaking!
Fortunately the warm weather and tropical sunshine is back today, although the wind has dropped, meaning our boat speed has dropped a knot or so and the nasty NE swell is back, so we are currently wallowing away downwind, which is a little unpleasant, but I think we are all so used to the boat movement now, we just ignore it...
Thursday night was steak on DoL - John managed to serve everyone the most enormous pan fried steaks with all the trimmings (including crunchy sauted potatoes) although there were a few interesting moments trying to keep peas on plates as the boat rolled and pitched, it was a fantastic meal!
The dolphins came back to see us again this morning although the whales remain elusive - we will keep watching for them though!
Best Wishes
Tony, Katy, Mark, John.
Dump002_small