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Northern Child - When it rains, it pours.......



Daily Run    221m
DTT             197nm
 
Lunch          Pasta Cabonara with extra Bacon and Lardons :-)
Dinner          Line caught Mahi Mahi with New Potatos and Tomato Jus
 
Hello again!  So the 2000nm party was sick - Champagne, Caviar, dancing girls and magicians - awesome............  OK so lets be real, there was a Champagne Cocktail, with a Rum kick and the Mahi Mahi was delightful, prepared by Deb and Howard.  It was hard to get a real party going though, as we were racing along at 9-10 knots but none the less it was a big milestone in the journey to the Caribbean.
 
Shortly before dinner, we dropped the spinnaker, poled out the headsails and then wooled the spinnaker ready for use tomorrw.  Wooling is literally the process rolling the spinnaker down it's length and tying wool around it every metre so that when it is hoisted, it does not fill with wind until you pull the sheet to break the wool.  If it fills before it is fully hoisted, the load of the wind in the sail makes it almost impossible to hoist.  Now in our night sailing mode, watch B prepared themselves for some more very dark night sailing.  You may remember that at the beginning of the passage we had a very large moon, which made night sailing much easier as we could see the waves.  Thank goodness for that to be fair as the high wind and sea states in the early stages would have been very difficult without the moonlight.  Now we have no moonlight, no ambient light, just several hours of inky black darkness.  It's kind of like being on a rollercoaster in the dark - I forget the name of it but there i one at Disney World in Florida.  Mind you there is no rain or salt water splashing on you there!  On the subject of rain, the last 2 nights have been very wet.  Last night persistent light rain and the night before sporadic cats and dogs rain!  As a result, during the day we are drying waterproofs, towels and even the odd person, plus drying out the boat thoroughly below. 
 
The miles are just falling away now.  It seems moments ago we had completed 1000nm with 1700nm to go and now we have just 550nm left.  550nm sounds a lot doesn't it, but when you have already sailed 2200nm it's like a gentle jog on a Sunday morning.  Before we left Flemming organised a sweepstake before we left, betting on the number of hours it would take to arrive in St Lucia.  The predictions ranged from 300 to 423 or 12.5 to 17.5 days.  Remember our previous best was 15 days and 6 hours, which was in 2009 on Lucy and my first ARC.  If we can get into St Lucia before 0700 on the 12th it will be 14 days which at this stage looks quite likely and had we not had the doldrum for 48hrs would have been certain.  The list of predictions are:
 
Eckhardt 310    12d22h
Gerrit 340         14d4h
Deb                  14d11h
Adolfo               15d
Howard              15d12h
Deitmar             15d17h
Matt                  16d
Richard              16d9h
Christian            16d16h
Tim                    17d2h
Flemming           17d5h
Tom                   17d13h
 
So, currenly it is looking highly likely that at the current speed and forecast for the next 3 days, that Deb or Adolfo will be our winner, with a guess of 15 days dead.  Not known for being pessimistic, reveiwing my prediction I feel as though I must have been lacking concentration, although I did say that the Skipper should not be involved in this bet.  Of course, now that I am and we are running ahead of schedule, we may have to have a little 2 day Grenadines cruise on the way ;-)
 
Crew Profile Flemming
 
Flemming is Danish and married with two grown-up children lives in Copenhagen after more than 15 years abroad, where he has performed executive roles with large American, German and British companies mostly with global responsibility for Operations and M&A activities. He has now retired from full time roles and is devoting some of his time to supporting small and medium size business getting access to funding. In addition he also represents a small British capital fund and is responsible for the Scandinavian market providing funding to small  IT, Media and Professinal Services companies, finally he also has a few board memberships. After retirement he devotes a lot of time to sailing and has just exchanged a Hanse 370 with a Hanse 400 which will be used for family cruises manly in Scandinavian waters. This summer the destination is likely to be Sweden crossing the country from Gothenborg to Stockholm and returning down through the Baltics. 
 
So, as it stands, we have just over 500nm to go and a cracking breeze blowing us there.  We have a few scores to settle with boats to the North of us who were lucky enough to have wind and overtook us while we sat in none, and trust me, the Child is sailing her heart out reeling in the miles anfd doing her damndest to catch them back up.
 
Hope you are all having a nice restful weekend.
 
Christian, Tim and crew




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