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Lydia - Leg 2 Day 12 - Even Lazier Monday



If it weren't for the skipper suddenly producing a bottle of very fine
champagne at sunset tonight to celebrate what we hope may be our last full
night at sea (but see below), it could be said that today was unremarkable.
More food has been consumed (Matthew's Primordial Soup and Fridge Basement
Rummage Sandwiches for lunch and steak [again!] for supper), more chapters
of our books have been read and mercifully another 150 miles have passed
under Lydia's keel.

It wasn't all mundane though. We have a friend! Sometime during Steve's
Middle/Morning watch a mystery yacht's lights appeared to the north of us.
During the course of the day we have slowly converged and this afternoon,
just as we were about to hail them to ascertain who they were, they turned
on their AIS (power saving taken to extremes?) and revealed themselves as
the German yacht GAIA. It's taken us all day, but rather satisfyingly, since
she is in the division above us and gives us time on handicap, we have now
sailed passed her and hope to pull further away from her overnight.

The conditions have been a bit lighter than we would like and, but for the
Northern Equatorial Current that gives us a ½ to 1 knot push and keeps our
speed just above 5 kts most of the time, we could have been tempted to motor
for a bit. However, it's now a matter of pride to see if we can get in to St
Lucia with less than 1 hr of motoring to declare.

Some yachts have now finished. Barbados features on the plotter about 100
miles off to the southwest and, with the West Atlantic buoy having slipped
past us well to the south, the East of Martinique one represents our last
chance to see one of these deep ocean weather buoys.

Not only has the beer gone but so too has the boxed red wine. Thankfully the
skipper has weakened/gone soft in the head and has said that he is prepared
to share some seriously nice claret (in bottles!) with us. You can tell that
we're ready to finish now. We've slipped another hour (so we're 3 hrs
behind UK) and have one more hour to go before we get in sync with St Lucia's
-4hr time zone. The onboard sweepstake hasn't gone active yet (loser gets
to buy the first round of rum punches on arrival) but the plotter's informed
guess is that with 170 miles to go at about 5 kts we could be throwing a
line ashore early/ mid morning on Wednesday ............. unless the wind
picks up! Oh the joys of sailing!


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