Summer Song - Day 5 - Swimming with the dolphins

21:22.26N019:49.90W Dawn came in the best possible style this morning. I was replacing William on watch at 7am. As is his custom, he was dozing gently over the tiller when I emerged, listening to the dulcet tones of Tony 'I did it my way' Blair on the iPod. But as I settled into the driving seat for my three hour stint, there was a promising scream from the fishing reel positioned on the stern rail of the boat.  This noise can often be a sign that we're moving faster through the water than the fishing lure can accommodate, putting extra strain on the line. but this time, the first shriek of line was followed insistently by a second and a third. William made it to the reel first and started cautiously applying the brake, while I dumped the main and jib to slow us down and reduce. read more...

Summer Song - Day 6 - Flukey winds and raw bonito

20:03.29N021:23.12W After tying down our bonnets and getting used to fast downwind sailing at up to 8 knots, we're now becoming acclimatised to slow upwind sailing again. Summer Song is making 3 to 5 knots towards the westernmost of the Cape Verdes, Santo Antao in light northwesterlies. Alex seemed to have the best watch of the night, fizzing along at 6 knots, which had the water singing past the hull next to my ear as I slept. Then Graham took over and saw the wind dive, and the sails start thrashing about. My watch was a stop start stop-start routine, veering between less than two knots and more than 5. We got into another huge sounding fish at dawn, but he shook the hook loose. We're expecting great things around sunset. We're making progress, though, and it's not hard. read more...

Summer Song - Day 7 - Off with the high horse, on with the donk

18:56.29N022:44.06W Even a millpond has ripples sometimes, and the odd dangerous looking glint to it. But the Atlantic can rarely have felt as benign as it feels this morning. It resembles a vast, cobalt blue sheet, unadorned with wavecrests, other yachts or even the dolphins that have kept us such good company thus far. The wind dropped to nothing during Will's watch and we wearily untwisted the slack spinnaker at midnight, packed it away and, with regret, fired up the donk for the first time during the voyage. It was a heavy decision to make, especially in view of our sniffy comments about the importance of 'sailing' during a sailing race. But it's the fourth calm we've been enveloped in over just three days, and this time, there seemed no prospect of the wind returning. Sure. read more...

Summer Song - Day 8 - Wind! Oh, no, my mistake...

17:44.40N024:19.84W I had been planning a polemic on the delights of sailing close hauled in 12 knots of wind: water fizzing under the bows, the boat gently heeled and the Hydrovane doing the hard job of steering, making watches a simple matter of staying awake for three hours. However, as I sat down to type, the wind veered a bit, pushing us onto a direct course for St Lucia, then backed a bit, then, with a final twitch, it died away to nothing. we're now making a flukey 1 knot through the water with the distinct possibility that the two fishing lines we're towing are really putting the brakes on. We were expecting a couple of days of fizzing down south west, before being forced onto a westerly course by the veering wind, then tacking onto a southerly course as the low. read more...

Summer Song - Day 9 - Go WEST!

18:18.18N025:59.13W Off and on, then off and on and off. The wind has been up and down as if some celestial lunatic were twiddling the dimmer switch with a wide grin. We saw our southeasterly wind return (shortly after yesterday's blog post) at about 10 knots and made good time for a couple of hours, fizzing on towards the Cape Verdes. The blow rose to about 16 knots then died to nothing within about 25 miles of Santo Antao, the westerly most of the island chain. This happened on my watch, from 7pm to 10pm, and I waited for about 20 minutes for it to return; to no avail. I reckoned we'd come a little too close to the 1800-metre high island and fallen into its wind shadow - certainly the speed with which the wind fell from 16 knots to 4 was breathtaking. We motored a couple of. read more...