Charm Offensive - Can almost smell the St Lucian Rum

After 13 days at sea we can almost smell the Rum of St Lucia, we are currently 400 miles out and assuming nothing goes wrong we should arrive in St Lucia in the next few days.Since the last blog update we have caught a Wahu and another Dorado but only caught them when we had 5kts of wind and were travelling around 2-3kts and sadly it was not in the right direction due to the wind on the nose. With a bunch of pure sailors on board the decision not to motor was made so we sat it out while our main flopped back and forth in the Atlantic for a little over a day. I've been told no wind can make people go crazy well I can tell you that after 24 hours of the sails flapping and the distance to St Lucia no closer that was enough to send us all a little batty. I can't imagine what weeks in the. read more...

Charm Offensive - Life aboard a Hanse 445, crossing the Atlantic with the ARC

Life aboard Charm Offensive a Hanse 445, crossing the Atlantic with the ARC:Crew Onboard:Nick Black - SkipperJohn Black - First mate A.K.A Cabin Boy (Nick's father)Peter Smith - NavigatorJavier Perez - Chef Extraordinaire, HelmsmanSailing update:The winds keep blowing, we have had an average of 20kts with a low of 11kts and highs of 37kts at about 160-180 true. This has been for the last 7 days. To begin with we had higher winds of around 28kts which allowed us to surf very well. Javier reached max speed of 20.3kts  surfing down a wave. Since then the waves have dissipated and so has the swell so the surfing is still fun but the speeds less. The main is setup with a preventer and the jib has been poled out most of the trip.Gourmet cooking update:Javier our Spanish chef is. read more...