Shalan - Day 17 - We've arrived in St. Lucia!!!

14:04N 60:57WSo we made it!!!! We crossed the finish line in Rodney Bay at 17:26 local time on the 7th December. It took us 17 days, 8 hours, and 26 minutes to cover 3406 miles from Las Palmas to St. Lucia. What a fantastic trip we've had full of laughs and giggles all the way, with a few hairy moments at times to keep us on our toes. We've had  halyards and lines breaking, sails dumped in the water in squalls, ropes around  the prop so by no means was it 'plain sailing'. The whole trip was a real joy to be on with new experiences and memories made that will last a lifetime, especially catching 'The Beast', the story of which will be passed from generation to generation!We're now all tied up in Rodney Bay Marina and more and more boats are arriving by the hour. Needless to say. read more...

Shalan - Day 17 - <150 miles to Saint Lucia

14:49N 59:08WAhoy blog readers!We type today's blog as day 17 at sea draws to an end and we spend what we hope to be our final night at sea, as we close in on our target destination of Saint Lucia.The day started amazingly with a glorious sunrise and the spinnaker pulling us ever closer to our destination on a bearing of 300.Following recent difficulties with the spinnaker halyard we excercise caution with regards to excessive wear and tear and routinely assess any damage and repair the sheet as a precaution. These visual inspections are undertaken every 6 hours and although time consuming at first the Shalan crew have now reduced the time taken as the process becomes more engrained - great teamwork! Next inspection is scheduled for 6am.We had seen very few boats over the past 2-3 days. read more...

Shalan - Day 16

14:23N 55:24WAhoy old buoy,Day sixteen began well however the wind dropped off around 2am meaning the spinnaker came down and engine came on for a few hours.Luckily, shortly after sunrise conditions improved and we had the sails up again and were maintaining a very respectable 8-9 knots for much of the morning. For the most part the day's been sunny and clear the only notable exception being a heavy shower this afternoon which actually served us well as those awake when these rain storms hit seized the opportunity for a long overdue shower!Due to a fridge management oversight on my part the intended slab of tuna marked out for tonight's meal was still totally frozen come supper time but thankfully Eric was on hand to save the day and served up some "stoemp", a Belgian dish consisting. read more...

Shalan - Day 15

14:11N 53:30WAhoy there,A1 1pm GMT on 04/12 we passed through our 2 weeks at sea mark - time flies when you're having fun!Overnight we saw the wind drop a touch, but non the less the spinnaker was up at first light and stayed up for a majority of the day, dropped only for ongoing checks on the temprorsry halyard line which had failed the day previously - we weren't going to have the same problem again!The ocean became quite calm in the early afternoon so whilst dropping the spinnaker we sent our resident action man, Richie under the boat to retreive the sheet we'd wrapped around the prop. 'Operation free prop' went smoothly and Richie was soon back aboard - sharks in the ocean may have been a motivator to work fast! After a quick check that we had propulsion again, the spinnaker was back. read more...

Shalan - Day 14

15:12N 50:16WGood evening all,We usually write the blog in the early hours as we like to get a full day/evening update to you, but yesterday we broke from tradition and submitted it early.As you'll recall yesterday was largely quiet and trouble free, however after submitting the blog things changed slightly....We carried on into the night with main and code 0. Wind was averaging about 15-18 knots ESE and we were moving along nicely at about 10-11 knots. We had a few squally blotches on the radar and went through a couple with no major issues, some light rain and wind up to about 20 knots but all was fine. At around 2:30am we had another squall appear on the radar. The wind started to get up to 21 knots and we were just in the process of considering whether to furl the code 0 or not.. read more...