Ca Canny - Days 20-22 Now actually almost there!

In the last couple of days we have seen much better sailing winds- finally the trade winds appear! On Friday we covered more than 160 nautical miles, and Saturday we experienced consistent 30 knot winds, but had to tack to 235 degrees overnight pushing us further south, a little bit off our ideal course. Then, at first light we tacked again to 290 degrees giving us a straight run into St Lucia with a good tailwind. Today, the wind reached over 40 knots making it a bit uncomfortable on board, and providing a further challenge to Alan who was cooking dinner. - Ca Canny. read more...

Ca Canny - Days 18&19- The end is (kind of) almost in sight!

Not much has happened over these past couple of days. We have all just been discussing and making plans for when we arrive in St Lucia and trying to anticipate when we will arrive, which will hopefully be early next week. We have had a few interesting flying fish on board, many that are a deep blue and last night we got one with stripes on it and it was almost a luminous colour, so that is interesting as we didn't realise how many varieties or flying fish there were. It's a good thing too because they are just about the only wildlife we see, other than the odd bird which is often too far away to identify. That's all from us for now! - Izzy. read more...

Ca Canny - Days 16&17- A birthday on board!

There was not much to report on yesterday, other than the very exciting but very brief moment where we saw a pod of dolphins! Unfortunately this time they seemed too busy to swim along with the boat and they passed us before we could get a good look at them, however our best guess is that these were bottlenose dolphins as they appeared to be grey on top as opposed to the last ones we saw which looked black and white. Today was celebration time as it is Charlie's birthday. We attempted to bake him a cake with mix we bought in Gran Canaria, but as we have recently lost use of our oven it was a microwave cake. Sadly but unsurprisingly, this did not go plan and what came out of the microwave was more of a brick than a cake, but at least the fish got a meal out of it (although we reckon it. read more...

Ca Canny - Days 12-15- Still going!

Not much at all to report from days 12-15, just that we tried to head further south to avoid a predicted calm spot- which we seem to have done successfully. However, yesterday (day 14) we had yet another problem with our spinnaker which wouldn't come down due to twisting. This meant that again Alan had to go up the mast at sea which is always daunting but by now he's a pro! So, that issue was resolved fairly quickly, luckily the sea was calm enough that he wasn't bashed around quite as much as the first time he tried it this trip. We have also incurred some significant damage to our main sail, with four broken batons and the top of the sail very shredded, which seems to be affecting our progress. However, morale is still high and we are all very excited to arrive in St Lucia (preferably. read more...

Ca Canny - Days 10 & 11 - Not much to report!

Day 10 was very calm which obviously isn't great in terms of catching our flights, but it was a lovely day and it was amazing to see the ocean so still. Today we have had a bit more wind but not necessarily in an ideal direction, so we have had to alter our course a little more than we would like to account for the wind. We are also trying to figure out how to avoid the calm spot that we can see approaching in the forecast, but this is difficult given the wind direction we are currently facing. However, its Burn's night and Maureen (Charlie's wife) kindly sent us a Scotland-themed quiz for us to do. The teams were Smithie and David vs. Alan and Izzy with Charlie playing the role of quizmaster, it got rather competitive, especially at the end when it appeared that there was a tie, and so. read more...