Layla - Better Layla than never 21 Nov 19

We made it to the finish line in Mindelo at 16:33 UTC 13:33 Local time – last in the fleet but not surprising given the delay to our start. With the start of leg 2 at 12:30 the following day we had just under 24 hours to turn around.

One of our crew Steve had been suffering from abdominal pain for a few days so we were met by the ARC team and directed to a local medical centre – an exam, an ultrasound and some interesting translation attempts confirmed nothing serious but with a minimum of 12 days at sea ahead of us Steve chose to depart for home. Steve the crew will miss you a great deal, we planned for 5 crew because if one could not make it we would not need to cancel the trip but it is not something we had hoped to experience.

With the news that Steves condition was not serious we allowed ourselves a welcome beer at the floating bar. Thanks to all the ARC Plus participants who welcomed us and told us that they had been tracking us towards Cape Verde.

Our skipper Malcolm and H made up a “Better Layla Than Never” banner and tied it to the guard rails – see the photo :-)

So with maintenance, cleaning, washing, re provisioning and passing the local formalities we had a pretty hectic time in Mindelo and unfortunately did not stray more than about ½ mile from the marina. So Cape Verde.. we can all say we have been there but not much more than that.
So as I write this we are seven hours into the sail and are getting our heads around a brand new rota – meaning we are now on solo watches 3x4 hours during the day and 4x3 during the night. Not quite as social as our two on shift rota but it will give us lots of down time in which to help those on watch.
Right now we are making a steady 7 knots with our night time sail plan of main and polled out genoa.

Layla out.