Amazing Grace - Day one - Just Amazing! (N26.32.9 W17.53.7 )

We crossed the start line in Las Palmas at the back of the fleet. It was a magnificent sight and not to be missed.  We chose the back since we're in no hurry and we wanted to stay out of the melee.  However that didn't stop someone trying to spear our Parasailor with his very close overtaking manoeuvre! Since the wind was so light and we crossed the start line doing 2-3kt some 20 minutes after most others, we kept inshore and were soon overtaking some of the back markers. The wind steadily strengthened and the wind acelleration zone was good to us with some nice wind allowing us to get to a new record speed of 17.2kt!  (Bit hair raising.) We were complimented by a nice gentleman with in a monohull with a red Parasailor as we passed him near the airport. He was wondering what he could do. read more...

Amazing Grace - Thanksgiving - for many reasons!

Its noon on Friday and we are at N21.41 W28.43 and going well!  Thanksgiving day in the USA was originally a celebration of sufficiency and so it was with us.  We were blessed with a sufficiency of fish in the form of 3 mahi-mahi (one of which, 'flipper' managed a back-flip off the hook when it was being swung on deck). Well done flipper!   We also had some smaller fish that arrived uninvited (Sorry about my teeth)! We were going to have a surprise Turkey dinner for our US crew but we decided that fresh Mahi-Mahi was better.  We fried him lightly in olive oil and some lemon seasoning - delicious! The sailing was slower than we would have liked however by the end of the day we discovered that we were officially in 47th place. We were still surprised but thankful we had not slipped back. read more...

Amazing Grace - Day 11 - Crossing Lines

It was a day of celebration for us!  We started with lumpy seas and a warm south easterly (southerly during the night - I thought we were in the NE trades - or are we lost??).  We had held over our 1/2 way champagne since Monday as the weather was not so good and none of us had much energy.  We paseed the 1000NM to go mark at 1700 UTC today - we have already sailed 1800 miles to get this far.  Strangely enough there was no line on the sea.  The winds have been light all day so we put out the fishing line as this historically has heralded a period of stronger winds and surfing to 10 kts.  Alas our tactic failed today and the 24 hour run has been more like 156 miles - still not bad for a mix of normal white sails and Parasailor! Talking of Parasailors, we heard of the sad demise of Ca. read more...

Amazing Grace - 16.34N 50.58W - Less than 600 Miles to go!

Sorry for the break in posting - I've been trying to encourage my shipmates into writing but alas none has been forthcoming.  Thus this posting will likely be a bit rambling in my usual style! Last night we had our first movie night.  We watched Indiana Jones and the last Crusade (we had considered Titanic but....)  It passed the time between nightfall and the moon coming up.  Sadly we were only moving along at 4-5kt as the wind droped right off a few days ago and we have been a bit bored.  Its pretty frustrating seeing the end in sight and not moving forward as we had been. We tried everything to get a bit more speed.  One of the techniques that we tried was to put out the fishing line.  The reason for this is that whenever we did this (before the full moon a few days ago), we got some. read more...

Amazing Grace - Counting Down

I think its official - we're all looking forward to getting there.  Until yesterday when the wind came back, it was getting a bit frustrating.  Happily, we got some faster miles under our belt.  In fact the wind came up even more about midnight so down came the parasailor and up went the white sail - in theis case the big genoa -good decision - withing 10 minutes it was blowing 23 kts and gusting to 32!  Happily it moderated and by the end of the night we had both headsails up and were going along rather nicely. Alas, then there were the squalls.  You can see them coming on radar and by eyeball. We track them inbound and make a plan that normally involves reducing sail.  We saw another boat on AIS about 6am this morning about 6 miles astern heading directly towards us.  Within a few. read more...