Day 16 is dawning on-board Blue Ocean though, in truth, I have long since
lost track of time. Vin and I spent almost a full hour the other day debating
what day it actually was. Our days are governed by the watch-keeping schedules
and cooking rota. Yesterday, Yellow Watch (Vin and I) turned out passable
burritoes for the evening meal. A choice of chicken, chicken & black bean,
and bean & chipotle. We hope to be in St. Lucia tomorrow – so that was the
last time that the crew will have to put up with Vin and I cooking.
We have had a request to post more photos. We certainly have a huge number
of photos (and video) which we will be sharing amongst ourselves. Posting them
on the ARC blog uses up quite a lot of costly satellite data – but Yv says he
has the technology to reduce their size and will try and post some today. Two of
teh crew have ‘Go Pro’ cameras which have been put to good use – underwater, up
the mast and on long poles off the stern of the boat.
The winds have remained consistently strong from the East allowing us to
make great progress. We exceeded 200nm in 24 hours with a velocity made good
(VMG) towards St. Lucia of more than 9 knots.
Yesterday we had our first visual siting of a ship since leaving Las
Palmas. A cargo ship, it passed about 2nm off our port bow. As I write, the AIS
is showing another yacht (not taking part in the ARC) about 10nm away. But we
have yet to register any ARC boats on AIS, even though we know from the daily
reports that several are in our vicinity. Maybe tomorrow?
The conversation over dinner was what to say when we spot land (hopefully
in the early hours of tomorrow morning). In French, one merely utters ‘terre’.
In American-English it is ‘land ho!’ and in proper English it is a far more
colourful ‘land ahoy!’. In Polish it is ‘ziemia’ whose pronounciation is a
mystery but whose meaning is also ‘land’.
I suspect the honour will fall upon the on-watch crew to utter whatever
they feel is appropriate (the others being asleep there will be no immediate
objections). However, I have no doubt the debate will continue today.
Ahoy for now.
Craig