Albatross - YB Connect Message from Fernando Assens

Nov 28 - 9th Day at Sea

All is well. At night the wind went down to 3 knots and we sat for a while like a duck on water. We started the engine and pointed the boat to a squall, 15 minutes later we had 20 knots of wind and excited crew members screaming for reefs. That lasted nearly 90 minutes (the wind, not the screaming). Overnight the wind was 5-6 knots "on the nose", and by tacking a few times we managed to sail at 3.5-4.5 knots of speed. Not bad at all.

I have been wondering if we forgot to tell Commander, our weather routing service, that we are going to St Lucia. Their route has us alternatively pointing to St Augustine, Florida, or Newfoundland, which is also an island, except it's in Canada. I suppose if we end up in St Augustine we can always take a plane to St Lucia and if we wear the Albatross shirt at the welcoming party nobody should notice that our boat is not at Rodney Bay.

Today we did not see any other sailboat around us. They may have chosen to sit tight rather than motor. On AIS we saw a cargo ship, ICDAS, going South to Manaus, crossing 25 miles ahead of us, and behind us there was a 100-feet powerboat going to Antigua. They will overtake us in about 2 hours.

Today's weather was fairly mild. We had flat waters and light winds, with the occasional hour or two of 10-12 knots. We are moving slowly but nonetheless moving. We are 1,663 miles from st Lucia, and Las Palmas is 1.014 miles behind.

We also took advantage of the calm weather, removed the floor boards and cleaned the bilge. We also did an inventory of water and food. We remain well provisioned.

As we were getting ready to cook dinner, the fishing line we have been trailing for 8 days started to shake. We run up, reeled it in, and yes! We caught a Mahi-Mahi! Kevin and James have been vindicated! They filleted it, and sautéd it with garlic and parsley. A side of white rice and tangerines for dessert completed the meal. Now that we can live off the sea, if we can learn to catch rain water we could "pull a Moitessier" and instead of winning this race continue going around!
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Transmitted by Fernando Assens using YB Connect (www.ybtracking.com)