Lady BouBou - Day 2

Two days down....Crikey only 48 hours, but it feels like much longer!Everyone still getting used to watches and sleeping when not tired (apart from Adam and Mark who got the easiest watches in the world!) but everyone doing well.A first for me, someone (who shall remain nameless) took some sea sickness pills for prevention yesterday while they still felt absolutely fine. 2 hours later, they couldn't stop throwing up and ceased to function as a homo sapien! Shame really, but we learned he doesn't react well to sea sickness tablet. He is however A1 again now, so nice to have you back with us Andy....Oops! ;-)OK what else? Yesterday was a bit useless for breeze during the day and I fear we may have lost ground to our fellow sailors around us. The wind then increased last night and has. read more...

Lady BouBou - Day 3

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times!...We had the most rip roaring day yesterday. Lady Boubou finally hit her stride knocking off a cool 200Nm in 24 hours in only 10-15 knots of breeze, and we watched as boats drifted away into the distant haze north east of us (which is good!) But as quickly as the unpredicted wind arrived  yesterday, so the weather forecasters got their smug revenge and took it away from us at around 9 pm last night. We wobbled and wallowed through a very peaceful night but not really making much ground on that bottle of rum at the end of the rainbow. And so with dawn approaching, we settled in for our usual early morning surge of breeze.....but it tailed off even more! Until finally we were down to "undetectable" levels of wind.I realised the boat. read more...

Lady BouBou - Shocked quite frankly!

Well I never! I'm shocked, stunned and feel a little bit cheated! Here we are in the most abhorrent conditions for a sailing yacht, no wind to speak of, and I sit here every day collating our position, watching boats sail by us and trimming our sails to within an inch of their life to try to just hang onto the fleet. I was thinking, perhaps I'm in the wrong job if I can't stay with these boats, a lot of which are much smaller than us and still they sail straight by. What on earth am I doing wrong?They cant possibly be using their engines this early on? Their range on their fuel cannot be any where near long enough to sustain this sort of burn rate for the duration to St Lucia.Then, in the mid morning sun today, while we are eeking out 6-7knts out of 8knts of breeze, flying close hauled. read more...

Lady BouBou - Whoop Whoop Whoop.....Boooooooo!

Whoop Whoop Whoop..... Aaawww Boooooooo!Excuse my outburst, I should explain!Whoop Whoop Whoop!Yesterday afternoon, we got a little breeze. Yesterday evening we got some wind (and nothing to do with the lovely Chicken Passanda for dinner). Last night, it filled in to a steady Northerly F4 from nowhere and close hauled with the gennaker up we were making 10-11 knots, solid and no surfing so real speed! Very happy and vary impressed with LBB. It lasted for 5 hours and we made 54Nm and in the right direction eating up the miles to St Lucia. All the way through my watch and most the way through my standby, so it was a lucky night for me... But Then.... Guess what happened......Aawww Boooooooo!Well the best way I can explain it is nothing began to happen.....AGAIN! So we began to bob and roll. read more...

Lady BouBou - The times are a changin'!

No, seriously, we changed our clocks, watches phones back today! On my watch obviously, but thats ok, because we also have 8 knots of wiiiiinnnnnd!!!!So here we are, 8knts 58 deg off the starboard bow and we are flying our gennaker with our staysail! Not your obvious combo I grant you, but we are making a steady 8 knots of boat speed so we're sticking with it.The boat looks like there's been a triathlete massacre today! Bodies strewn around the deck in various different positions, most of them drooling a little bit. Crew getting tanned by the sun and cooled by the breeze. This is more like it! The wind is in completely the wrong direction but we no longer care. At least we have some! And it may go again later today, but again we dont care..... We are very much living in the moment and at. read more...