I’ve now got a bank of pretty good memories from the trip. The first night really stands out – sitting in full waterproofs, in the strongest wind I had yet sailed in, watching the boat making really good speed and shrugging off the waves that sluiced beneath us, all under a bright moon and clear sky – pretty special. Losing the parasailor and broaching, whilst not much fun at the time, really helped increase my confidence. And landing, gutting and filleting that dorado made me feel like a real hunter-gatherer. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that feeling of complete isolation and vulnerability I had for a couple of days in the bad weather – knowing that there was nothing we could do except keep plugging on through it, with no land for about another 1000 miles. But I guess that’s what big ocean passages are about!

I’ve just received a round-robin email from my uncle bringing everyone up-to-speed with their plans, and his summary is a very close reflection of mine: “All in all, a memorable experience that I would happily repeat but probably won’t”. Which is a shame, but a big undertaking like that asks a lot of the patience of your work colleagues and loved ones, and I’m not sure I can make that demand again. At least, not for a couple of years……

We were expecting to be off the north of the island at about midnight or so, ships time. So after a bit of supper, I went to try and get some sleep before being needed to take the pole down for the last time as we rounded the island. Ominously it wasn’t long before I heard the patter of rain and the rattle of the boards being slotted into the companion way to keep below decks dry. The rain passed and I came up on deck to lower the pole. At this stage we were about 10 miles or so from the finish. Ann disappeared below to check the chart plotter and that’s when the first squall hit. It was a brute! Ann saw the wind speed indicator hit Force 10, which made it the heaviest squall of the trip. Up on deck Rob was really having to battle the wheel but we managed to ride it out.

Then another one hit hard on the heels of the first, and of about equal strength. After we’d ridden that one out Rob and I both thought “What on earth did we do to deserve that…?!”. And then another one hit us! We have a preventer rigged on the boom: this is a line leading forward from the boom to a pulley block and from there back to the cockpit – if we inadvertently gybe, it stops the boom slamming across to the opposite side of the boat – this tends to result in broken booms, parted main sheets or at worst, all the shrouds on the (now) leeward side of the boat being taken out and bringing the mast down. Well, it had served us well but in that third squall the block simply exploded – we still have the various warped bits of it we found spread across the deck – and so we had the dreaded inadvertent gybe. Fortunately the block, then the guard rail and stanchion took a lot of the energy out through the boom preventer and we didn’t sustain any serious damage (although the stanchion is now near enough parallel to the deck).

At this point the autohelm also decided to go on the blink, which meant Rob was trying to get the boat sailing in the right direction again, but we’d continually end up gybing – and of course we had no preventer to stop this. Ann was down below wondering what on earth had happened and I had to suggest she stayed down below until we were reasonably sure the boom wasn’t going to come crashing across and hit her out of the boat as she tried to climb up the companion way.

Eventually we got things stabilised and were able to continue towards Pigeon Island, with Ann relaying navigation information to Rob via me. But there were more squalls to come, and just before the fourth one I noticed a cruise liner, every sailing vessel’s nightmare, steaming up behind us. Thankfully it stopped, obviously sitting offshore overnight to avoid paying nighttime berthing fees wherever it was headed.

The fourth and fifth squalls were mainly rain, and a hell of a lot of it. Rob & I got absolutely drenched, the wettest we’d been all trip, and visibility was next to nothing: perfect conditions for navigating into an unknown harbour looking for a flashing light that signifies the committee boat on the finish line. Somehow we made it across! We were warned that a RIB would be approaching and taking flash photography of us as we finished: I have to say I think Rob & I looked miserable. If the photographer can lip read, I apologise. The comments were not directed at you personally, but were just a reflection of our state of mind at the time! Ann didn’t even manage to get into the photos as she was below on the radio with the organisers trying to work out what on earth we did next…

When we got into the marina there was a very merry (the sort of merry that only 7 hours of hard drinking can bring about) welcoming committee. I just wish we’d been in the mood to appreciate it. Certainly from my point of view, and I think it is the common view on board, there was no sense of elation as we docked, or even relief. We were just very tired, very wet and pretty teed off at the last couple of hours! So we tied up and went to bed, only to be woken very shortly afterwards as we were boarded by my parents (Mum is Rob’s sister as well) who had flown out to surprise us: mission accomplished! It was great to see them and we ended up staying up till 1130 the following morning catching up….

It has taken the best part of three days but we’re all more or less back to as normal as we get. Without getting too introspective, we’re feeling a bit better about the whole crossing. Particularly as everyone has been saying that this was a pretty tough, high wind ARC compared to the normal ones: so we know it’s not just us being a bit wimpy. Final corrected times aren’t in yet, but we think we’ve done ok – there are lots of boats ahead of us with plenty of engine hours, we’ve only got 1 hour. It was going to be less, but as the final squall hit us 1.8 miles from the finish line, it was a question of “stuff this” and we motored in – we didn’t fancy beating into 25 knots of wind at this point in our lives….

So that’s it from Trucial Coast in ARC 2007. I’m enjoying a few days in the St Lucian sunshine before heading home (except most of the time it’s been cloudy with squalls – sound familiar?), Rob & Ann are going to cruise the Caribbean for a while and probably head back to Europe on the ARC Europe in 2009. Although I did hear him discussing the cost of sticking the boat in a container for the return leg…..I’m sure time will polish off the rougher edges of this crossing and the good days will become increasingly rose-tinted and all thoughts of a container will be banished when the time comes!

So, once we arrive in St Lucia, whenever that may be and in no way presuming it will be in the next 24 hours….here are some of the things I’m really looking forward to

1. The rum punch they dish out on arrival. Still only had one beer and one elderberry and port liqueur the whole crossing!
2. A few beers. See above.
3. A shower. I have been showering on board, but to be able to stand under a stream of water and not worry about conserving it, or having to pump out the shower every 20 seconds or so, will be blissful.
4. Going to the laundrette! Some of my clothes for the crossing have definitely reached their limit…..
5. Some chocolate. Those who know me, know I have a massive weakness for chocolate (I blame Dad). But since arriving in Las Palmas on 23rd November I have not had one single bit of chocolate! So I’m really looking forward to that.
6. Some fiery food. I don’t know why but I’ve got a craving for a curry or something really spicy.

So there you have it, my simple wish list. Not too much to ask!

We have continued our incredibly bumpy progress towards the finish line without major hiccough so far. I don’t think the swells are any bigger than those we’ve had previously, but our angle to them is meaning we’re really being tossed around. However our DTF is 105 miles and we’re still anticipating a (very) early morning arrival into Rodney Bay, all being well. We’ve had a bit of company for much of the last 24 hours: in the afternoon yesterday as we were running along under reefed genoa and staysail, a Moody 54, Myrach of Ibiza dropped in on us, and we’ve been within a couple of miles of her ever since, although I think she has disappeared over the horizon in the last hour or so. She did prompt us into a sail change and course change, aiming directly for the north of the island and broad reaching under genoa alone. During this sail change, we discovered a distressing fact: our staysail, the workhorse of the entire sail collection, which has done an amazing amount of work (I make it roughly 220 hours out of 432 sailed so far, probably our most used sail!), has been damaged and won’t be used again this trip. Several of the metal hanks that attach the sail to the inner forestay had unclipped and two of them had chafed right through the sailcloth on the luff and were now chafing directly onto the cord that runs up the inside of the luff. She has been (temporarily) retired with full honours. By which I mean she’s in a bit of a heap on the foredeck scrunched with a couple of sail ties and attached to the deck with shockcord!

So our final day (fingers crossed…) is on us – we’ll be continuing much as we are throughout the day and then in the early hours of the morning we’ll complete some yachty manouvres around the top of St Lucia, pass Pigeon Island and sail across the finish line into Rodney Bay. I’ll post one last log to let you know how it all went!

I’m still mentally thinking of all the things I want to do when we get ashore, but there’s a whole lot of chickens there that are barely even eggs yet, so I’m not going to jinx myself by talking about them just yet! The ship’s clocks went back another hour yesterday so we’re UTC -3 now and we’ll go back another hour on arrival. And other than that I have to confess I’m running out of things to talk about! I think (certainly speaking for myself) we just want to get there now and not have to worry about squalls or have to fight our way to get from one end of the boat to the other – the rolling is particularly bad this morning which is making writing this a bit of a chore as I’m being wrenched away from the navigator’s table and then thrown across it – so I’m calling it a day.

Sorry! There will probably be just two more logs from me now – one tomorrow and one after we arrive on Friday. Of course the Atlantic may have other ideas…..we’ll see!

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!

But perhaps the greatest excitement of the day (maybe even the trip, but I’m biased) came at about 1730 when our fishing gear came good and I managed to land what we now believe to be a dorado. Having suffered the indignity of being trailed behind the boat at 7 knots for a while before I noticed it, it was then hauled onto the boat, dumped on our “Welcome On Board” mat that sits at the stern of the cockpit and had Turkish Cin poured into its gills! There are many ways to die but drowning in the Turkish (very very rough) approximation of gin is one of the more unusual… Consider that this bottle of Cin had survived on board this vessel for about 5 years and you get an idea of just how bad it is!

When reading the logs of previous ARC participants to get some thoughts on what lay in store for me, the debate of how best to dispatch fish raged large across the logs (and the ARC participants forum). Alcohol into the gills is dogmatically held by some as by far and away the best method, but others remain equally convinced of its ineffectiveness. Well, it worked for us and our fish expired with the minimum of fuss, and (I like to think) visions of long Turkish evenings propping up bars with no prospect of a hangover in its eyes.

What followed next could hardly be described as the minimum of fuss as I think I’m the only one on board who has gutted a fish before, only once, and it was a teeny trout, not a 2 foot ocean-going dorado. But I managed to get it gutted and (thanks to Rob’s new-found friends on the radio net, Blue Flier and Burnadebt) skinned before cutting four very decent sized fillets off it. Ann then rounded off the job superbly by battering and frying it for what turned out to be a very late supper, but also the first time we all sat round a table and ate in civilised fashion on the trip.

As we were preparing the fish we were also treated to a fantastic sunset, so all in all it was a very fitting way to see off what we all fervently hope was the worst bit of the crossing. That area of nasty weather we’ve been locked in for several days is absolutely vast, its southern edge is several hundred miles long, and it has hit much of the fleet. It was pretty serious stuff – there have been large numbers of ships reporting broken booms and other fittings, as well as several broken spinnaker poles. One boat reported a gust of 83 knots, which is just incredible. Not surprisingly this broke his spinnaker pole and ripped the track attaching it to the mast right out of the mast. I don’t know what he was flying on the pole at the time, but frankly it could have been a handkerchief and 83 knots would still have done the damage. More seriously there have been two abandonments, one of a dismasted boat that sent out a mayday and another of a boat which had steering failure – this abandonment was carried out under controlled circumstances. Everyone was safely rescued from both. So it has been a bit hairy out here and I’m very glad we’re out of the southern edge of the heavy weather now.

The forecast is for good steady winds now and decent weather (with occasional showers) all the way to St Lucia (although there may be some grotty weather on our final day). We’re also getting pretty close now – 611 nm DTF. However, Rob is rightly urging us not to get sloppy or lose focus. There are still thundery squalls out there that could cause damage and we are still several days out, so we remain vigilant! You’ll doubtless be pleased to know that at great personal cost, Rob sorted out the aft head and identified (he thinks) the problem with the forward head, which can be fixed in calmer water (personally I think he’ll have to wait till Rodney Bay for that!). So we at least have a partial paddle with which to effect creek escape. I’m not 100% sure what the freezer situation is, but I think Ann has been frantically cooking up anything that’s defrosted so it can keep another couple of days in the fridge. Otherwise we’re reliant on tins, and my fishing skills (one catch in 15 days, not such a great return….). We’ve got a few showers around today, but thus far nothing too bad, so we continue our progress to St Lucia. By the time I post the log tomorrow, we’ll be down under 500 nm DTF (insh’allah!) and I will probably be turning my thoughts to “Things I Will Do On Arrival”. I’m sure most of them will be easy enough to guess!

We do have a bit of a head problem: heads are our on board toilets. Our forward head is airlocked (does this make it head locked?) so we can’t pump it out and it’s inoperable. Our aft head has some sort of problem with the holding tank and outflow pipe, so seems to be backing up. So you could say we’re up a certain creek without a paddle! Rob has fixed the aft head before on this trip and now faces the prospect of doing it again. To be a bit delicate, it involves pumping all fluid out of the tank and then pumping air into it to “blow” the blockage. It’s deeply unpleasant and I don’t envy him at all…

We’ve also got a freezer issue, as it’s not freezing things as it should: most of the contents are pretty much defrosted. So we’re working out what to do with the food…. I’ll let you know what our plan is tomorrow!

Our radar shows up rain storms as yellow blobs and I think we’d all like to be able to turn it on without seeing either a procession of little squalls marching up on our position, or seeing ourselves at the centre of one almighty yellow splat that stretches for 6-10 miles in any direction.

We’ve only got 6 or so days (hopefully!) till we get to St Lucia and it would be nice to do some of it under blue skies flying more than the bare minimum of sail. Keep your fingers crossed, but I’m not holding my breath – I realise now that the beard I’m growing is not just a face warmer, but may have deeper significance. If only I could find that dove – I’m sure I stowed it somewhere on board…..

The waves really are something else now. Whilst we’re not quite in Southern Ocean territory, it’s still something to behold. There is an underlying swell of up to 15ft, with a huge wavelength of 20+ metres, local conditions then pile a further 10-12ft on top of this, in smaller wavelengths. If you get one directly on top of the other, you find yourself staring at a wall of water that comes some way above your head as you sit at the helm, and when on top of it, it’s like looking out from a second story window at the surrounding water.

It also means the boat now surfs from time to time. Normally she will get a bit of a surge from a wave passing beneath her and pick up speed as she sluices down the back of the wave (laying right over to leeward as she does so). But occasionally she drops in like a pro-surfer, powering down the front of the wave and picking up a lot of speed.

We’ve had pretty constant Force 7 winds, with sustained periods of Force 8 since yesterday morning, and frequent gusts over 40 knots. This means with the brief exception of a few hours yesterday we’ve also been sailing under the staysail only, and still making very good progress of 6.5-7 knots. To give you some idea of the conditions, our previous highest speed of the trip so far was 11.1 knots, obtained with the parasailor up, just before she blew. Ann topped that with 11.5 knots this morning under staysail only: the parasailor has a sail area in excess of 150 square metres, the staysail has a sail area of 32 square metres – that should tell you all you need to know about the wind and surf in our corner of the world right now.

To go back a couple of days to halfway day, I’ll give you an idea of what we actually did to mark the occasion. We didn’t actually have that fondue you’ll be surprised to hear. Well a pot of boiling oil on a boat that’s heeling up to 30 degrees? It’d be madness! So for lunch Ann made us smoked salmon sandwiches, which went down a treat. And as promised I accompanied it with my first beer of the crossing. That can of San Miguel tasted absolutely fantastic! (To the marketing people at San Miguel: if in exchange for this shameless promotion of your excellent beverage, you want to arrange for a few free cases to await us in St Lucia, that’d be just fantastic! Just address them to S/Y Trucial Coast, Rodney Bay Marina. Thanks!)

In the evening, despite increasing sea state and winds, Ann excelled herself and actually made us a roast dinner! I was hugely impressed even if the weather did mean we had to eat it out of bowls. We rounded off the meal with the novelty liqueurs from Vicky – my elderflower and port made for a good end to the day. Just as well considering what was to come!

Conditions on board are a little taxing now – this is the rolling motion that everyone talks about on Atlantic crossings. You have to hang on for dear life, moving around the cabin is like an exercise in mountaineering, and you can’t leave anything lying on a table or surface because it will end up on the ceiling! But progress is good – Rob and I have both independently come up with an arrival time of late morning on 14th December in St Lucia, although if we keep having days like the last couple, it could be sooner still. That makes it one week, pretty much to the hour, as I write this!

It’s an exercise in nothing more than speculation but just for the record (so I can pat myself on the back should this be at all accurate) I think we’re going to arrive in St Lucia between 0100 on 14th December and 1700 on 15th December, probably somewhere bang in the middle of that range. Isn’t it amazing that with all the technology at my disposal I can still only come up with a 40 hour window for our arrival! But we’re obviously dependent on the weather ahead and whilst long-range forecasting can give good indications of trends I don’t think it’s precise enough for me to be any more accurate.

Talking of technology, here’s a bit of a run down of all the gear we have on board. We have a GPS system which incorporates a chart plotter. We’ve actually just sailed into an uncharted area of the Atlantic, so rather than the usual contours of the sea bed, we just have a plain blue background showing now. I’m a bit disappointed in this as I’d have loved it to say “Here Be Dragons”! This chart plotter shows us our speed through the water and over the ground, and our course over the water and over the ground (taking into account currents etc). It shows us the distance in a straight line to the northern tip of St Lucia, and how far off our original plotted course we are (33.72 nautical miles south of it at the moment: the wind has come slightly north of east, so we’re being pushed south of the track. But we do have 1354 nautical miles in which to come back up onto course….). We’ve got instruments on deck that display much of this data to the helm. We have 2 radio systems, on VHF and one using SSB (no idea what this actually means, but it does have better range than VHF). We have something called a Navtex that displays various bits of information and warnings from coastal authorities round the world. As we’re about 1000 miles from the nearest coast it’s been quiet recently. But as we left Las Palmas we were warned to look out for plagues of locusts, which concerned me because I knew we’d forgotten to load two of every animal onto the boat.

We’ve got an iridium phone as well so should never be out of touch. Rob connects to the internet once or twice a day, either through the SSB system (slow and limited bandwidth) or through the iridium phone (much quicker, but we only have a limited bundle of minutes to last us till St Lucia). There’s all sorts of other stuff on the boat, but these are the key ones as far as our navigation etc goes. These, along with things like the fridge and freezer compressors, are the main drain on our batteries. We have an onboard generator that runs for about 4-5 hours a day to pump juice back into the batteries and we’re finding we need to run the engine every now and again as well to really charge them. So the hum of the generator or clatter of the motor is a surprisingly frequent accompaniment to our days.

We’re running along goosewinged with twin headsails today in front of a Force 5 sometimes 6. There’s a fairly large sea following us so we do surf down the back of some pretty big waves. We’re above 7 knots as often as we are below it and we’ve covered quite a lot of ground in the last few hours. It’s pretty exhilarating sailing, and whilst there is a fair amount of roll, we can definitely live with it! So hopefully it will continue all day and tomorrow I can report a record day’s distance to you.

You are cordially invited aboard S/Y Trucial Coast for a Halfway Ho Down, to celebrate our being equidistant between Las Palmas De Gran Canaria and Rodney Bay, St Lucia.

Dress Code: Saturday Night Fever (think the best of the 70’s)
Time and date: Ummm…..see above!

Starters:
Peeled prawns in a Marie Rose Sauce on a bed of shredded iceberg lettuce, served in martini glasses.

Main Course:
A classic fondue made with line fish (or maybe flying fish, see below).

Dessert:
A kiwi and passion fruit pavlova

All served accompanied with Mateaus Rose wine.

After dinner, Ferrero Roche and After Eight chocolates will accompany cheeses and digestifs.

We will be hoisting a mirror ball up the spinnaker halyard and having a disco on the foredeck (might as well use the spinnaker halyard for something….)

Carriages (or tenders): 0100 UTC

RSVP
BYOB

Onto the fishing – we chucked the line over yesterday for the first time, and already I feel like a real fisherman because I have a “one that got away story”. Our squid lure on a weighted line was taken by a 50 cm fish, but as I reeled it in, it unfortunately escaped. It’s a pretty rubbish story but it is true! Seriously – if I was lying it would have been a lot bigger than 50 cm. That’s not a line I’ve used often before.

Flying fish continue to launch themselves to their deaths on our decks – this morning was the first morning without at least one on board for a while. So if the squid lure and my reeling tactics fail us, we can always eat flying fish. But apparently it’s really not very tasty at all!

That’s all for today, tune in again tomorrow to find out if we make it to halfway or not!

We had another fairly peaceful night – there was a squall at 3 a.m. that required a rapid reefing of the main, but as it happened at a change of watch, and as the reefing was completed quickly and easily I don’t think it counts as a drama any more – we’ve come a long way since Las Palmas! (1185 nautical miles to be precise! While we’re at it, DTF is 1630 miles if you’re interested.)

The weather looks set to hold throughout the day – cloudy skies, Force 4 from south east, gentle swells getting more gentle. So we’re hoping for a bit of a rest day – snooze, potter about a bit, go fishing for the first time. Given how expectations have been continually confounded so far, that probably means we’ll be in a Force 8 in about 3 hours time…. Our weather predictions come from a variety of sources – ARC organisers supply a daily forecast and Rob accesses various weather faxes from sources around the globe. He also gets GRIB (GRid In Binary) files – these are quite amazing. They are pure computer modelling of expected conditions anywhere in the world, with no human interpretation. They’ve been as accurate as anything so far and are the only source to suggest the south-easterly winds we’ve been having.

We’re still hugging our rhum line from the point when we finished running mainly south and turned to the west. A rhum line is the great circle route, the shortest distance between two points on the globe. We follow it because the rhum line is the quickest route to the rum line at the bar in Rodney Bay Marina, St Lucia. We seem to have got the ocean to ourselves now. For most of the journey so far, there have been 2-4 boats visible at any time, normally on the horizon – sails by day and masthead lights by night. However for about the last 24 hours there’s been nothing, and radar confirms this. Maybe we should shower more often? We do see occasional large vessels – like the cargo ship that passed half a mile off our port side last night whilst Rob & I were faffing about in the dark trying to reattach the mainsail to the boom. The shackle had buckled – and the last time we had a full main out was the first night, so we reckon it was bouncing about in the horrible swells when the wind died that did the damage. Replaced and sorted now anyway: all in a day’s work!

Halfway point is about 200 miles away now – so should be reached tomorrow afternoon. The plans for our dinner party are well underway and I’ll share them with you tomorrow. All I’ll say now is be there or be square, it’s going to be the ONLY party to go to in this 400 square miles of the Atlantic. Quite literally.

Normal service has been resumed now however and we’re in a Force 6 coming from the south east: no-one told us to expect that! Seas are large and confused as well, so it’s all fun and games. I think it’s because I suggested yesterday that we were in the Trades – clearly this put the mockers on the whole operation, so I shall never refer to those winds (that we are clearly not experiencing today) by that name again. But if I refer in glowing terms to a wonderful easterly breeze, then we’ll all know what I’m talking about!

It was a good day yesterday – the boat clearly likes the goosewinged twin headsail set-up and we made loads of ground – it was our best 24 hours to date, covering 163 nautical miles at an average speed of 6.8 knots. Happily this means that we have now travelled over 1000 nautical miles (as of 5.30 a.m. today) and our DTF is 1772 nautical miles as of now.

As promised, here’s an insight into the boat routine – seen purely through my eyes. The opinions here are of the author only and in no way reflect those of the boat owners. Although I’m sure they’ll let you know if they think I’m too off the mark…

3 a.m. My day begins – Rob wakes me for my night watch. I struggle, gummy eyed into my life jacket and get up on deck. We wear life jackets at all times when on deck. The jackets come with a life strap that has to be clipped on to lines running the length of the deck – we always clip on at night, in rough weather, if we’re the only ones on deck, and whenever we head out of the cockpit up to the foredeck. I struggle a bit with the night watch – four hours on your own in the dark can be taxing, especially if the moon is behind clouds most of the time! Much of this log is mentally composed on that night watch, which probably helps explain things….

7 a.m. I come off watch, replaced by Ann, and head back to bed for a couple of hours. 10 a.m. I’m back on watch – Ann and I spilt the day between us watch-wise as Rob is busy for a good 4 hours of the day with “office work” – getting weather forecasts, position reporting, participating in the radio net roll call etc. We normally do sail amendments at about this time of the day, which often means I’m stood on the foredeck hauling things up, down, and round the bend (it’s mainly the skipper I haul round the bend I think – if the parasailor wasn’t actually being stowed in its bag up on the foredeck I’m sure he’d like it to be my cabin…). I’m on watch until Ann has had time to prepare lunch and wash up afterwards – about 1.30 p.m. typically. At some point during this watch Rob takes over for 10-15 mins while I write this log.

1.30 p.m. Off watch and a couple of hours to myself – if it’s a red letter day I may take a shower (we have to make our own fresh water from sea water but we’re still being cautious with water usage in case the water maker goes on the blink, so we probably shower every 2nd or 3rd day. Nice!). I’ll also read for a bit. We get the DTF information for all of our class in the rally and Rob and I sit and go through this to see how we’re doing. Once you apply TCF (time correction factor – handicap basically) we reckon we’re about 11 out of 20 currently, although the DTFs come in 24hrs after the event so our good run yesterday might have shifted us up the rankings.

4 p.m. Back on watch. Normally my favourite time of the day. Sails are set and trimmed for the conditions, the worst of the heat is out of the sun and we can potter, working on the “critical non-essentials”. Yesterday that meant rooting around the boat to find a shackle to replace the one that we lost when the parasailor guy chafed through. Ann makes supper for about 6 p.m. and special note must be made of her efforts here. She prepares a decent hot meal every evening, and below decks is never stable at the best of times. How she produces a decent meal when her oven alternates between being wall-mounted and floor-mounted from one wave to the next, I don’t know, but it’s impressive stuff!

7 p.m. I come off watch and hit the sack.

So that’s my typical day. I’ll sign off now, I can’t think of a teaser for tomorrow’s log right now, but I know that this winning combination of nautical gibberish and rubbish jokes will keep you coming back…

I’ve decided that the Atlantic has a split personality. During the day, she’s given us pretty nice weather and good winds by and large, but at night she likes to remind us who’s boss…. We had another interesting night last night – we were three sail reaching just south of westwards as daylight faded in about 20 knots of wind and creaming along, hitting 9 knots in the gusts. As the wind was getting up we reefed right back – took the mainsail down to 2 reefs and rolled up part of the genoa, significantly reducing our total sail area. And yet still there were ups and downs during the night – the genoa eventually had to be taken right in as we were experiencing gusts of 30 knots and very lumpy seas. I was off watch for all of this, down below not sleeping. Imagine strapping a mattress to a bucking bronco and that gives you some idea of what our cabins were like last night! When I came on watch at 3 a.m. the wind had bent round to the east and we were on a very broad reach (the wind coming from almost directly behind us) – all we had up was a double reefed main and the staysail, but we still hit 8.5 knots on a few occasions!

We’re now running in front of the wind with twin headsails and making 7-8 knots. So…. we have little fluffy clouds, an easterly wind, twin headsails rigged and lots of flying fish – I think we have definitely arrived in the Trades!

Our distance to the finish is just over 1900 miles now, and our projected total distance is about 2800 miles. So we’re anticipating passing our halfway point on Tuesday unless the Atlantic throws up some more surprises! We’ll have a bit of a knees-up to celebrate: invite a few friends over, cook a 5 course dinner with some good wines, finish it off with a cheese plate and a couple of bottles of port. If you’re in the area, let us know and swing by, it’ll be great to see you!

As has become traditional, I’ll leave you with a teaser to bring you back – I’ll be giving a run down of a typical day on board Trucial Coast. So if you want to know what all your favourite trans-Atlantic sailors get up to, tune in again tomorrow!

Now I know I promised you details of how to sleep on a heeling boat, but here’s the thing….I found out last night that my patented method is useless when you’re in the downwind cabin with a parasailor flying. The acceleration from the sail is phenomenal and so you find yourself sliding around the berth and having the strangest dreams to boot! The only way to get comfortable is to wedge yourself against the downwind wall of the berth – unfortunately that position is currently occupied by the spare sails. Some rearrangement of my boudoir may be required.

The parasailor gave us a fun night – it had been pulling us along very strongly but as I came up on deck to relieve Rob on watch at 3 a.m. the wind picked up from about 10-15 knots right though to 30 knots – quite strange as there was no associated cloud or rain. Anyhow this left us very overpowered and we had a rollercoaster ride for a while, and on one occasion (Mum, stop reading now….) we broached (when the boat lays itself over pretty much on its side!). As we tried to bring things under control, the parasailor guy (rope leading to the windward edge of the sail) had had enough, and chafing from the eye in the pole caused it to give way. So we had 150 square metres of sail flapping about uncontrollably up front. But, with remarkable calmness and the minimum required amount of approved maritime curses, we were able to douse it and get it back in its bag. As far as we can tell, we’ve suffered no lasting damage from the episode, which is great news. I think we’ll aim to get another sheet (rope) onto the parasailor and fly it again, although only in light winds – ca 10 knots. Anything much more than that and we can set the boat up on her main, genoa and possibly staysail to do 6+ knots, which is perfectly acceptable.

I’ve got to get back on deck now, as Rob is kindly spelling me for a few moments on my watch to enable me to get this written. He got as little sleep of any of us last night and so keeping him out on deck in the sun too long could result in a keel hauling….

Tomorrow…..a wildlife report – don’t miss it!

A Parasailor is a huge (150+ square metres) sail made of extremely light material, very similar to a spinnaker, and flown off the front of the boat. The cool innovation is that halfway up the sail is a slot with what is very like a parachute foil suspended in it. This gives the sail lift, helping it to keep its shape and lifting the bow of the boat out of the water, preventing it from submarining as can happen with a spinnaker. We popped it up for a couple of hours and then dropped it again. We reached south through the night (a reach is normally the fastest point of sailing for a boat and broadly speaking it means the wind is coming side on to you). We want to get south quickly now as there is an area of very light winds gradually working south behind us and we want to be in the Trades and escaping from them soon. Currently we’re gently running (sailing directly in front of the wind) goosewinged (the two principal sails out on either side of the boat) with the genoa (large sail at the front of the boat) on a pole – this prevents the sail from collapsing too much in light winds. We’ve only got a Force 3 behind us but we’re ticking over at 5.5 knots. I thought a quick interpretation of the Beaufort Scale might be illuminating and give you some idea what we’re experiencing. So:

• Force 1-3 (1-10 knots of wind): We’re basically drifting, or making very gentle progress.
• Force 4-5 (11-21 knots of wind): Nice sailing!
• Force 6-7 (21-33 knots of wind): Exciting stuff, hold on and put on some waterproofs!
• Force 8 (34-40 knots): Yelp!
• Force 9-12 (41+ knots): For those in peril on the sea…..

We’re settling into our routines now, and we now have the odd bit of spare time. Sealegs are kicked in now, so I may try and do some reading. I need to relinquish the laptop to the skipper now and let him get weather forecasts and other such useful stuff. But stay tuned! Tomorrow I’ll give exciting details on how to sleep in a yacht that’s heeling at 25 degrees….

We’re starting to tweak our routine as we get used to things on board – shifted the day watches around to accommodate the various key tasks we each have: Rob, position reports, getting weather updates and planning the route and our radio net with a big group of other boats in the ARC; Ann – preparing our food (vital!!); Andrew – no specific chores, semi-intelligent ballast and general rope puller.

Other than that not much to report – no wildlife yesterday but a few dolphins on day 1. We always seem to have about 3 other ARC boats on the horizon and occasionally pass close, normally at night (which is, I believe, how ships are supposed to pass). I’m keeping my fingers crossed for a whale or two – forget New Zealand or South Africa, surely the best place to spot a whale is from a small yacht in the middle of the Atlantic?? I’ll keep you posted!

When I got up at 3am for my watch, we were back up to a Force 7/8! In the dark – the biggest winds I’ve yet sailed in! So pretty exciting stuff. This morning, after I grabbed a couple of hours kip and cunningly missed the rain showers, we’ve got a fairly steady Force 5 from NE and it’s set to be with us for the next couple of days. It’s pretty decent sailing and not too uncomfortable above or below decks, although with the swells you do find yourself pinballing around a bit down below!

I’ll sign off for now and hopefully be back with something a bit more verbose in the next couple of days – right now, I need to get back on deck for some fresh air!

Race is perhaps too strong a word for the ARC: it is essentially for people who live on their yachts: a means for them to move their boats, that double as their homes, from one cruising ground to another in the safety of an organised event. That having been said, everyone will want bragging rights at the finish line so it won’t exactly be a leisurely amble across the pond. Looking at previous ARC reports it seems our crossing should take about 3 weeks. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology we will not be entirely out of contact: a daily position report will be sent to Cowes and logged on the ARC website (www.worldcruising.com/arc) so you can follow our progress there. In addition we’ll be able to email a daily log to be posted on the website, so I’ll be jotting down thoughts and experiences as we cross so those who are interested can see just how we fare!