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Bamarandi - Thursday 26th November - It's A Ten from Len?



Position 15.47.401N 048.37.040W

Days

Day

Date

Time

Miles to St Lucia

Miles in 24hrs towards St Lucia

Cum Miles towards St Lucia

Ave Miles per day towards St Lucia

1

Wednesday

18th

13:00

2090

 

 

 

2

Thursday

19th

13:00

1901

189

189

189

3

Friday

20th

13:00

1756

145

334

167

4

Saturday

21st

13:00

1605

151

485

162

5

Sunday

22nd

13:00

1423

182

667

167

6

Monday

23rd

13:00

1238

185

852

170

7

Tuesday

24th

13:00

1073

165

1017

170

8

Wednesday

25th

13:00

891

182

1199

171

9

Thursday

26th

13:00

722

169

1368

171


It seems I missed the passing pod of dolphins while typing the blog yesterday so the report of no wildlife was wrong. I’m told they were however in the distance and none of them came to play in our bow waves.

The Cosmopolitan flying fish have returned in their hundreds including some tiny ones today. We found one unlucky one in our anchor locker - it must have managed to fly in through the hole the anchor goes out through, an acrobatic feat that surely would have got a Ten from Len (we hear Strictly Come Dabcing is on again in UK). 

We have a vibration on our port side shaft / gearbox when the prop is freewheeling down the waves that is much better when we run the engine at low revs. We will get this investigated when we arrive at port. There are dampners in the gearbox and it may be something has gone amiss with that device. 

We originally had to stop and get into the water (“we” being Donald) to see if there was any seaweed on the prop causing the problem. Sam suggested we try one of our GoPro cameras an an extension handle we have and it has provided crystal clear video for us of each side and we can see the prop is clear as we are still moving along. We have also discovered this is a great way to have a look at the tender slung under the back of the boat to check on the strapping at the bow as we we go along. 

We have been sailing through huge areas of light brown seaweed floating in very large clumps on the surface and below. Fishing is out of the question as the weed would just catch on the line and end up on the hook. Donald & Audrey have shown us pictures and video of them surrounded by huge areas of this light brown seaweed in BVIs where we believe it has come down from. There must be millions of tons of it around us in the sea. 

Last night passed uneventfully which was good news after the excitement of the night before. We were visited by a small lone white gull at about 6.45am and it wheeled round and round the boat getting within feet of us sat at the helm gliding on the wind and looking straight at us, then breaking off and circling the boat to come back round and fly next to us. This went on for about 30 minutes and we wondered if it would eventually tire as there was quite a lot of vigorous wing flapping - but we think it may eventually have landed on the boom and hitched a ride for some while.

It is a lovely sunny day and we have all been sat up on the flybridge for most of the time. Our last soup rations were saved for another day and we had pulled beef pitta breads with salad filling for lunch. Delicious.

We are slowly changing the clock as we go so we can arrive at the Antigua Charter Boatshow, where Bamarandi is putting in a first appearance, in the right timezone. Everyone is working phased watches through the night so the time shift will not really affect us now - but we need to be in the right timezone by the time we get to Antigua. So we moved the clocks an hour yesterday and we will do the same over the next 2 days. This means our mileage covered over the last 2 days needs to be averaged. We think at this rate we have 4.2 days to go from 1pm today so should be in St Lucia in the afternoon on Monday 30th subject to wind / weather etc.

All is good on board but with some head scratching about why we have this new gearbox / shaft vibration - everyone is however great and enjoying the passage. Lots of planning is happening as we go as we are being emailed the preference sheets for the 3 charters the boat has starting in mid-December. So Audrey (with Caitlin) is hard at work planning menus and shopping lists around guests likes and dislikes and Donald is planning all the various routine  maintenance we need to do on arrival together with a list of other things to cover off to make sure the boat is fully ship shape. 

We can see on the daily email fleet reports we get that our sister boat Lir is running in second place of the ARC+ fleet (with their gennaker flying no doubt) and we wish them luck in being first over line although no doubt some stiff competition still and it will be a hard fought run for the line. Come on Graham, Darren and the crew. 

As I write this we have just got to 699nm to go to St Lucia of the 2090nm we started with. 

And we realised yesterday we have been a month at sea, and it’s a month to Christmas! 


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