Trucial Coast, Day 17 - starting to think about the finish
Andrew Hunt December 11th, 2007
I think it’s safe to say that we have now had a few days of classic Trades sailing. It’s been pretty pleasant - running before a breeze of about 20 knots keeping up a speed of over 7 knots most of the time. Yesterday was a record 24hr run for us, making 168.2 nm at an average speed of just over 7 knots. We had the odd shower earlier in the day but most of the day was sunny with a fair amount of cloud about. We saw a couple of other yachts over the course of the day, one overhauling us at a distance of about half a mile.I think as we approach St Lucia, the fleet will start to bunch up a bit as everyone converges from the various routes they’ve taken across the Atlantic. Today we’ve come onto a reach making some way back north: we’re doing this to make sure that we’re able to take advantage of an expected wind shift to the north east, and will be able to run or reach into St Lucia. If we keep running as we had been, there’s a chance that we’d have ended up a way south of the tip of the island and would have had to beat up into the wind to round it and reach the finish line: we’re not really in the mood for close hauled sailing into 20 knot winds and accompanying seas!
We’re now showing 431.6 nm to go - in actual fact this is just to the tip of St Lucia - the actual finish line is about another 10 miles on, on the western side of the island. I’m still guessing an arrival of about mid/late morning on Friday. Which means I just have 3 more night watches left to do!
Ann set a new speed record for the crossing yesterday, hitting 12.7 knots surfing down a wave under a reefed genoa and staysail. It’s nice to hit high speeds but we’re definitely not out to break these records: generally if we find ourselves over 10 knots, we reef down - safety first! I have to confess that I was taking a perverse pleasure in the thought of arriving with our top speed having been achieved under a staysail only, but everything that gets us closer to St Lucia is greatly appreciated.
Having had a break of a couple of days, our staysail went back up yesterday: she had been replaced with a storm jib at the back end of the bad weather, but she’s out there working for us again. She’s been our most used sail by some way! Using the storm jib has put us just two sails from a full house: that is, we’ve used nearly every sail on the boat. The remaining two are the cruising chute and the storm trisail. We’re not expecting light enough winds to merit the use of the cruising chute, and as the trisail is only meant for retaining the barest of control in storm winds, we’re really hoping not to have to use that! So the full house will have to wait for the ARC Europe return leg…..
That’s all for now - not much to report on these sunny, breezy Trade wind days and that suits us all just fine!
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