Amokura - Log Day 13 - Land!

Land in sight! We are just over 25 miles from our Waypoint off the bottom of Grenada and on the horizon can just make out the grey-blue peaks of mountains. First land in 13 days! I can hardly believe we have nearly sailed over 2000 miles across the Atlantic and fulfilled a long-held ambition.

It's been an eventful 24 hrs to get to this final stage. We finally caught something other than weed - an iridescent silver-green Mahi mahi - a beautiful fish whose meaty steaks will make a fine supper in port with a good bottle of  wine. So spirits were high when the night watches began.

The night promised to be calm with consistent winds - ideal parasail weather - we visualised spending our last night at sea bowling along under the stars, chilling out listening to music and enjoying peace and quiet, but nature had other plans. At 0200, on Vicky's watch, a sudden squall came through, and the rest of us shot out of our bunks and into lifejackets. Amokura was rapidly overpowered, roaring down the waves and rounding up into the wind. In the process of snuffing the huge sail we suddenly broached, foredeck burying itself into the waves and 'on her ear',  Amokura heeled sickeningly over, spray flying across the deck and crashing noises coming from down below. We quickly let out the sheet, ironically, earlier in the day we had a discussion about not having stopper knots on the end of the parasail sheets for this very reason. Thank goodness we were able to let the lines go and depower the sail - seconds were crucial, as it was like being on an out of control roller coaster. The boys battled on the foredeck as, even with the snuffer on there was still a huge amount of windage with the sail, but within minutes the beast was tamed. Calm was restored and the white sails unfurled. Phew!  Luckily, despite the sounds of things crashing around down below, the only casualty was the glass plate which flew out of the microwave and smashed onto the galley floor. No harm done, Vicky went into sweep and vac mode as we did not want to have to remove splinters from the soles of crew members.

So we are all shattered after a very disturbed night. As a final last laugh at our expense, the weather produced some sharp rain showers as dawn approached. The view of Vicky and Mark wearing their waterproofs in the cockpit as grey seas and clouds billowed past was more English Channel than Caribbean! You couldn't make it up!

We are all shattered after a disturbed night, but the adrenaline is pumping and we're full of excitement about our arrival in the next few hours. Signs of civilisation are being revealed, with the first plane spotted in the night sky, also a fishing boat, and some very large cargo ships on AIS.

On the to-do list before we arrive is to hoist our yellow Q flag (indicating that we need to clear customs) and our Grenadean courtesy flag. We will be sure to fly this correctly, memories fresh in our minds of almost sparking an international incident in the Cape Verdes by inadvertently hoisting their flag upside down (whoops!)

We also need to reattach our ARC banner to the rail as this got taken out by a rogue wave earlier in the trip. When we get much closer,  lines and fenders will also need to be unearthed.

For now, the sun is shining down, we are joyfully skimming over the waves doing 7-8kts and morale is high. We should easily be in for rum-punch o'clock....

Miles run in last 24hrs: 158 nm
Average speed: 6.58 kts
Distance to Grenada: 26 nm

Signing off...

Liz Brigstocke