Thursday 24 November.
570 miles sailed and 2250 to go.
Four days completed now, 570 miles sailed and 2250 to go. Excellent sailing
conditions, as the sea has settled down somewhat and we are going along on a
beam reach at 7 knots, which is pretty well full speed for White Satin.
Yesterday's intended blog was not sent as we got caught up in the sad drama
of the sinking of 'Noah', and as mentioned before we were the first boat to
arrive to their aid, we were rather shell-shocked after then witnessing the
crew have to take to their liferaft and then go through a rather difficult
process of rescue by a commercial ship that luckily diverted to help as
well. Luckily all the crew, including 2 small children, were safely got on
board and their yacht left slowly sinking. After that our mundane
ramblings about life at sea seemed a bit irrelevant.
So back to some mundane ramblings. We have now all settled into the routine
of changing watches, hot bunking, cooking rotas etc, and are adapting to the
challenges of trying to sleep in a boat that is constantly pitching, rolling
and occasionally lurching.
One of the challenges of such a long voyage is that thinking about how far
there is still to go can be rather daunting, so we are tending it to treat
it rather as a marathon and mentally break it down into bite size chunks.
So this morning we passed the first of these as we entered into the tropics;
reaching the halfway point will obviously be a major milestone and tomorrow
we will be halfway to the halfway point (somehow this seems better than only
being a quarter of the way across !). At the moment we are heading mostly
south rather than directly to St Lucia, as this will get us into the trade
winds, which should actually make our passage quicker (even though rather
longer), so reaching the trade winds and turning due west will be another
major landmark, and probably be reached the day after tomorrow.
Yesterday's blog was going to mention us being treated to a visit from a
large pod of dolphins - several dozen - who diverted to swim and leap around
the boat for 5 minutes before continuing on their way, a lovely sight.
One of the other yachts reported that they hit a whale - they said that
there was no damage, though I suspect the whale may have a different
opinion. We were also visited by a very tired looking egret which tried
to land on the yacht but found it too difficult, as we are several hundred
miles from land I think it must have got itself seriously lost.
Tropical Times
Jon
PS Vicki wanted a photo of the crew with "the sea in the background". It was
difficult but I did my best.
m_DSCN1048