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Purrr-fect - Leg 2- Day 1- Excellent start across the Atlantic



We had lots of last minute tasks on our last morning in Mindelo, Cape Verde because we had spent all day Tuesday on a full day tour of the neighboring island of Santo Antao. That island is very dry and arid on one side but green and productive on the other side because of the rain caught by the high mountain from the ancient volcano. The most beautiful sight was the caldera of the ancient volcano which is farmed and has animals grazing. It looked idyllic.

The rally started at 12:45 pm for multihulls and we had another good start reaching down the slot between the two islands. As predicted, there was an extensive wind shadow leeward of the island but we ghosted along and only used our engine for a short time to get through it.

To our surprise, the fishing reel sang out with a fish on the line,and Paul reeled in a small colorful fish. It was too small to keep but fun that we had our first catch of the trip. Best of all, the evening treat was a huge school of dolphins They played around the boat for 30 minutes, splashing and jumping as high as 8 feet straight out of the water.

Just before dinner, the wind picked up on the beam, and the boat took off on a lumpy reach. There is a low pressure system near the Canary Islands so we have some high swells but winds should settle in more to the east in several days. For now, we are enjoying the northerly winds which give us a nice beam reach point of sailing.

It is strange to see more than 2000 miles to go on our IPad. We are planning on 21 days and hoping for less if we continue to get good winds. At one point when we were ghosting through the island shadow, our ETA read 56 days! But now that we are moving well again with these good winds, the ETA is down to 16 days. That would be great!

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