Scarlet Island Girl - Island Girl Pointe Nero

Hi All,All is well out here, great sailing last few days in 15knot trade winds, we have had the big Blue kite on for most of this time, a spell of wind into the early 20’s last night prompted a peel (well a quick drop and hoist) to the big heavy kite, only a fraction smaller, but as it was originally intended as a heavy kite on a 70’er it is fairly bomb proof!Think combined with our new anti wrap net, and a boom preventer makes the passage almost straight downwind less scary!Earlier today at about 0600UT we passed our pointe Nero, which is the point at which we are furthest from dry land, Barbados to our West and the most NE Cape Verde island both a hair under 1000nm away (over 1000 land miles tho), of course the nearest sold stuff is much nearer than that at about 3miles away straight. read more...

Scarlet Island Girl - Island Girl Blog

Hi and welcome to this electronic message-in-a-bottle cast into ether by the Island Girl. Not a real girl you understand, but the Dufour 45 sailing yacht 'Scarlet Island Girl’.We're into day 11 of The ARC, a transatlantic race for cruising yachts and it seems like a good time to check-in.It’s been a fascinating race, like a game of chess, where all the pieces need wind to move them, played out in flat calms and howling gales.Early in the race the weather went downhill-in-a-handcart, and the racing fleet scattered to find their best options. While the majority of the boats ran South and East, Island Girl decided she would make best passage by taking some short-term pain and punching thorough to better conditions as quickly as possible. The ensuing adventure saw us creep under. read more...

Scarlet Island Girl - About time we wrote something!

Apologies for very tardy blogging, it has been quite an eventful race so far!Best start with a quick summery of our race so far I suppose.The start was keenly contested, the inshore end of the line was advantageous, especially as the big boys picked the outer end.We had the two X yachts GodSpeed and Optim’x for company.Peter who owns Godspeed has been a friend since last ARC and I was surprised but quietly impressed that he engaged us pre start stopping us gybing back to the line (totally within the rules) to time his start very well leaving us to follow him, to a 20 second deficit, not much in ocean racing, but certainly put us in our place!The x 40 Optim’x had a nice looking full size jib, we had opted to reduce our rating and go with a smaller heavy weather jib as our biggest. read more...