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Aretha - Who let the dogs out? The Final Night at Sea



Position: 14 19 North, 59 26 West.

We’re due North of Barbados. She lie 63 miles away. Memories from way back are conjured up of staying in the Colony Club, sauntering around art galleries in Bridgetown and the Jolly Roger pirate cruise complete with copious amounts of Mount Gay rum listening to the track “who let the dogs out” which was reigning high in the charts at the time. Music afficiando’s will probably be able to tell me the year. Happy memories indeed.

We have a full on magic show here right now. A magic show creating memories. An assembled and slightly random collection of my own memories as they happen:

1) Having yet another Roast meal on board. We’ve been pretty much having them every day for the past week to make sure we use up all the food. Jani tells me there is enough for one more roast. Seriously. I’ve never eaten this well.

2) Sharing a half Jagermeister shot with Paul and Jani to toast the SFU crew and the fabulous sailing we’ve all had over the past 14 years. Idle talk currently exists of a boys sailing trip in Australia next year. Idle talk indeed.

3) Sharing the sunset with Bluebell on the foredeck. We watched the sun down with the most glorious colours - the light eggshell blue of the sky and the orange from the sun setting dotted with clouds to create the most amazing vista. Counting the stars up one by one as they gradually appear and having Bluebell sing Twinkle Twinkle little star. We only returned to the cockpit when we hit 500 stars. I think it went 21, 22, 23…wow thats a lot of stars…500.

4) We’re in sight of other yachts now. We’ve been closing up miles on our friends, Hugh & crew and Oyster Blew with is some 5 miles South of us. We can see another 2 yachts to port as well. It will be a close finish as there are some 8 or 9 yachts within 20 miles or so. We still favour safety over racing and reduced sail overnight but you can’t help but try to judge if you are making or losing.

5) I reflect. The biggest highlight for me has been Nichola conquering her mal de mer. It took 5 days and to see her happy and confident, moving easily around Aretha is fabulous. She’s in her element, helming, reefing and spending time with the children,

6) Finishing reading Red Rackhams Treasure with Columbus. I’d forgotten how much I enjoy Tintin. The fact that Columbus wants to get the rest of the Tintin collection and to read them with me is only good news : ). His reading and diction has improved much on this as we take it in turns to read a page out loud.

I’m sure there are many more and this is just a fraction of the memories we’re creating as a crew. We truly are creating magic and it feels great.

More memories to make in 86 miles as we make landfall in St Lucia and get to celebrate our first major Ocean crossing onboard Team Aretha. We’re ahead of our original ETA and this will be our last night at sea on this crossing. We estimate we’ll arrive some time between 1pm and 3pm on Friday local time.

Over and out from team Aretha.

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