It will not have escaped the notice of our more eagle-eyed readers that it’s been a few days now since we arrived in St Lucia and as yet there has been no final log! After taking a couple of days to recover from what was quite an eventful final day, I wasn’t convinced of the need for one, but I am assured by family that there are people across the globe waiting to hear how it all ended, so here we go!
It’s amazing how the ocean can make the most rational of people superstitious! Within an hour of our arrival in St Lucia, we have to hand a completed rally declaration to the event organisers.
Well it looks like the Atlantic doesn’t want to let us go without a bit of a reminder of what she’s like – we’ve had a few showers this morning and one squall! So we’re definitely not there yet.
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.
Well yesterday was everything that the ARC is supposed to be about! After the poor start which I mentioned, things really brightened up. We had a whole day of sunshine, no rain that I know of, and were able to dry off our kit, open up the hatches and get lots of fresh air down below and generally enjoy the sailing.
Is there light at the end of the tunnel? I hope so… I have a fairly long tether but the end was definitely in sight when I came off watch this morning, having spent 4 hours in the dark getting heavily rained on the whole time, under a sky completely covered in cloud.
I’m beginning to think my off-hand comment about taking on two of every creature before departing Las Palmas was not so far off the mark. After a false dawn yesterday (some sun, a few showers) last night was business as usual with heavy rain squalls and high winds (Rob had 2 Force 9 squalls…).
First of all, apologies for not posting a log yesterday. We had a bit of a rubbish day and anything written would certainly not have been suitable for a pre-watershed audience!
Well at 0230 today, our distance travelled from Las Palmas was 1416 nautical miles and our distance to St Lucia along the rhum line was also 1416 nautical miles, which is as good a reason for saying we’re halfway as any!
Morning all. Unfortunately our Halfway Ho-Down is going to have to be postponed for a couple of reasons. Firstly I may have spent too long in the sun as I miscalculated our ETA at halfway by about 8 hours yesterday.
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