Bolero - leg 2 Day 4

Day 4

Last nights watches began at 19:00. We had a marvellous display of the constellations in the moonless, cloudless sky. We have been wearing oilskin bottoms as we have taken a few waves over the side.

The Genoa was furled to the next reefing point as the winds increased early in the night. Gwyn and Ian were on watch when we encountered our first Atlantic squall. The winds increased to 36 knots, the gib was furled more and the boat was steered to go with the wind. The winds and rain abated after 30 minutes.

Skipper’s leg had a glancing blow from a flying fish during the night whilst he was sitting in the cockpit. It was returned to the Atlantic Ocean to surprise someone else! Gwyn saved another just before breakfast, 2 others were quite so lucky. Nick saw a turtle while helming, there haven’t been so many flying fish around the boat today.

The drum roll distance to the way point at midday is 1648, we have sailed another 170 towards our destination in 24 hours, 518 miles in 3 days.

The weather grib files were downloaded, the Genoa was unfurled to the first reefing point and we have altered course by a few degrees.

We moved the clocks back one hour to Atlantic Adventure Eastern time. It is rather an academic procedure as none of us have known the correct time anyway…. We have been working on Cape Verde time which is one hour behind BST which is one hour behind GMT. We ate dinner when it was ready we were free to choose the time zone in which we were eating! Whatever the time, Gwyn’s Tofu Pad Thai and noodles was delicious!

We reefed the gib and rolled up the Bimini before we ate as there were some squalls on the horizon. The first passed very close to Port and the other to Starboard. We are very relieved to have missed them, the one on our starboard side had a rainbow at each end.

Fair winds
Nick, Maz, Ian and Gwyn