JaZoFi - JaZoFi Arrival

Land ahoy! We have sighted land for the first time in 14 days; the good thing about that is this will be JaZoFi’s final log for ARC 2023. The better thing is that we will shortly be enjoying a Caribbean rum in a bar in St. Lucia!  Thanks to Scotty Bailey for sharing this experience. I know he has spent the past few years doing Research, Planning, Commissioning, Testing, Delivering ready for ARC 2023. We can all see how and why he is so proud of what has been achieved so far. Congratulations to Oyster for delivering a superb vessel, the vessel is beautifully finished, robustly built and certainly capable of the onward world circumnavigation in the Oyster rally. No doubt Scotty will give you valuable feedback to help improve the Oyster 595. The crew: Glenn Gaynor, what a great mate,. read more...

JaZoFi - day 14

Two weeks at sea and we can almost smell the rum in St Lucia! Not much different in the last 24 hours, everything previously described is now on repeat. The big excitement was watching Glenn get the starboard sea water strainer cleared. After the inlet growing some substantial barnacles, all systems were running off the port strainer. Glenn set to work thinking through then building a new sea strainer lid that included a steel handle a bit like a stick shift on a manual car, allowing him to blindly clear out the barnacles …success, the starboard strainer is operational again and the cooling water is again evenly split between port and starboard. Scotty had a line in most of the day, but the fish in this part of the world are monsters and took 600m of line and a couple of good lures. read more...

JaZoFi - day 13

A bit more variation in the weather in the last 24 hours with some lighter winds, then stronger winds then a heavy downpour under a very low black cloud late at night. This was combined with some solid 27 knot winds for a few hours which had JaZoFi humming at a perfect angle to St Lucia. Visibility was very low so sailing into the abyss not know what was in front kept the senses primed. Earlier in the day we caught another Mahi Mahi, perfect size for 5 fillets which was prepared and on the BBQ in less than 90 minutes lunch was superb, fresh fish in a wrap with salad. Everyone is in high spirits in anticipation of terra firma under our feet and a Caribbean rum in our hand.. read more...

JaZoFi - JaZoFi day 12

Another great sailing day. Put another 200 nautical miles under the keel as we broke through the 1000 nautical miles left to sail.Sargasso sea grass was a talking point for some time after we sailed through a reasonably large carpet and needed to do a back down to relieve the keel and rudders. Seaway was a lot kinder today with the wave height dropping from 3m significant to 1.5m. Lasagna for dinner tonight was very tasty.  . read more...

JaZoFi - JaZoFi day 11

Ground Hog Day….Running out of new news with today being a dead ringer for yesterday.Only variation was dinner which we had a second edition of the Mushroom stew of day 3, once again it was to die for, all Chef needs to do is serve it under a more exotic name and he could serve it in any Michelin star restaurant.. read more...