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EH01 - Day 14 & 15



 
Hello hello hello from the sun soaked Atlantic..
 
We have now sailed 2700nm which is so amazing and have 430nm to go..!!
The mood is high on EH01 as the crew are getting some overdue sun and R&R “off watch” and working our behinds off “on watch”” to make up any additional miles that we can.
 
The Atlantic really has a split personality: one day she is sending squall after squall and the crew are exhausted, bruised and battered and the next day all is forgiven and she is sending great winds with lovely sunshine. Andras said that he has never encountered so many squalls on a crossing , he is lucky we are such a well oiled crew.! On watch this morning our crew were all watching the squall cloud-line and it was so great as we were able to keep the kite up for as long as possible and got the kite down just as the rain came..!
 
Squalls
Jimbo wanted me to explain what Atlantic squalls entail as we have never seen anything like these sailing in the UK and Ireland.

When we see a squall coming, this appears as a dark dark cloud extending to sea level, we can expect a sudden increase in wind speeds with gust exceeding up to 30knots, heavy rain, lightning, reduced visibility and conditions where you need to reduce sail area and the crew gets into survival mode. These conveniently happen at night and just at the beginning/end of watch and generally last around 20mins.!

All the crew are beginning to turn a nice shade of brown (even the Celts) but most of us are still using a high sun factor as we are quite exposed out here and we have some useful products on board:  Surfachem SPF30 which has been popular and is nearly all gone and also the Surfachem aftersun lotion which has a calming cucumber smell and a great skin repairer for any missed bits!
 
Milestones & ETA Rodney Bay pool
We all love goals and when we were at 800nm to go, Andras broke open the extra sugary Haribos, these had to be controlled as I didn`t want the boys to go too mad. Paul and Cass reminded me of children of old receiving their orange and shiny penny on Christmas morning; the sheer excitement on their faces.!

We can nearly smell the rums (and chips) in Rodney Bay so to makes things interesting we are running a pool ($10EC each, last of the big spenders.!) on arrival times, this is in Boat time, GMT -2, not local time which is GMT –4. There are times ranging from 6pm Friday (optomistic but would be great) to Saturday morning at 10am. EH01 normally takes about 14-18 days to finish the Arc so we should have been in on Wednesday 7th and looks like it will most likely be early Saturday 10th. Most of the crew had flights back Sunday/Monday and some have changed them to mid-week as it is a big pity to arrive in the Caribbean and have to rush straight back home and not be able to celebrate our Atlantic crossing.

 
Breaking news
Hot off the press as I type, we are within 1 mile of another boat, you can clearly see their red kite. this is after sailing 2700nm and not getting close to anyone. Andras checked and it looks like they are not in the race but just doing their own crossing. Giles and I wanted to sail over to them, not just for the social interaction but because they are not racing there is a high probability of great snacks on board, unfortunately this did not happen so we had to get a chocolate hit from the Cocoa tin instead.!
 
Tune in to the next blog where you will meet all the sailors.!
EH01 Marketing Director out

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