Chance Encounter - Chance Encounter: Day??? - Final Report

No idea what day it is - final report is being written with a fantastic calypso drummer belting out tunes at BB's restaurant in Rodney Bay Marina. It's lunchtime, a breeze is in the palms and ice cream and baileys are on the table (this is called a "chance encounter" if you are to order it....a drink from Corfu days!).So our last day on water was full of surprises. Adrian was hit by a flying fish on his very last night shift...by morning we had five on deck and seemed to chase a flock of these silver and blue winged beauties out of every wave. By ten a.m. the breeze was up to 22-25knots and while we were blasting westwards we picked up a distress call that was being attended to by three other vessels and the coastal patrol people of Barbados and Martinique (motorboat with spoiled fuel. read more...

Chance Encounter - Fwd:

Day 19 update: Home StretchWell here we are, 85 miles from the finish line and in the middle of our last night at sea.  The trade winds gave us a good day yesterday with 16-23knots of breeze on a straight shot to St. Lucia. Another pretty quiet day in safe mode still logging 170 miles travelled at an average of just over 7knots of boatspeed.The big news from day 19 is that we finally caught another Dorado. Late in the day, Rigs and Rob were looking longingly at the lines and about five seconds after Rigs said "It would be really nice to catch another fish", a whopper of a Dorado hit our medium-diver rapala and leapt out of the water. Muster stations!!! Fifteen minutes later and we were looking at a 16-pound 90cm fish coloured with the most incredible emerald greens, golden yellows,. read more...

Chance Encounter - Fwd: day 18 update

Update Day (18?): Foot off the gasFirst off a "hello" to the students of L.V.Rogers Secondary in Nelson, BC, who we understand have been tracking us since Las Palmas - hope you're enjoying the show!We write day 18 with a question mark as a joke, but in reality none of us have much of a concept of time these days as the hours and days roll together in one long haze of waves, stars, and clouds. Distance now seems a more accurate measure of things and it looks like we had a decent run yesterday of around 160 miles, which would have been a fantastic 180 miles if we hadn't been forced to run north with that large squall we told you about yesterday (the one where we blew up the tweaker). The near misses of yesterday has got the whole crew in a mindset where we're taking our foot off the gas. read more...

Chance Encounter - Day 17: Near Misses

Chance Encounter Day 17: Near MissesAfter two days of marginal downwind sailing, Tuesday allowed Chance Encounter to stretch her legs a little with winds between 12 and 16 knots.A good overnight run started with a couple of good movies ("the man from U.N.C.L.E." and "Dallas Buyer's Club"), and a close, controlled pass behind the boat "Nashorn" - a 49-footer that we've seen a lot of over the past two weeks. Continued good overnight speeds of 7-8knots were maintained until early morning, at which point we docked up a gybe under gennaker and managed to put the pole through the corner of the sail....rookie error! The situation looked irretrievable, however Adrian's sailmaking skills again saved the day and the gennaker was back up by noon.A beautiful sunny day followed which allowed a little. read more...

Chance Encounter - Day 14 ARC race 2016 - Well and truly settled!!!

Fourteen days at sea and we well and truly settled into life at sea.Watches run smoothly and we have adjusted to four hours on, four hours off.Rigs and Rob are still producing good meals but we are running out of green veges.The first round of washing has happened and the boat is surprisingly clean, tidy and mostly pong free.Rigs blocked the toilet last night so has a job to do to clear it out in the morning.We have all been getting along well, but are running out of small talk (jobs, family, work, general interests) and moving into a secondary phase of understanding others' foibles.Rigs, as expected is always relaxed and mostly under control, but has developed and obsession with our position relative to the other boats, and his face lights up when the next position update is downloaded.. read more...