Albatross - YB Connect Message from Fernando Assens

Dec 1 - 12th day at sea

All is well. We are 1,347 miles from St Lucia, and Las Palmas is 1,331 miles behind us.

It's 8:00 am, and in the last four hours I had some of the best sailing ever. Wind was 11-15 knots from 338°, slightly abeam, waves were 4-5 feet. Our course was 257°, speed 7-8 knots.

The boat was sailing perfectly balanced with two reefs on the main and full jib. The sky was full of starts, and in less than 2 hours we saw over 20 shooting stars (meteorites). Ahead of me, was the Orion Constellation and behind me the Ursa Minor and Polaris. On the East was Jupiter.

We flew with the wind on the beam the whole morning. In the afternoon the wind came down, we tried the other two spinnakers on board, which were not originally designed for this boat, and decided to go with the larger one, which is still a bit undersized. Our speed went up from 4-5 knots to 7.5 with wind ranging from 8-12 knots. At 6:00 pm the wind peaked to 14-16 and we took the spinnaker down. It was fairly easy with the "sock".

Today we caught our second mahi-mahi. Chuck, that was seating next to the line, claimed he had fished it. Success has many fathers!

All of us are in good health and excellent spirits. We continue to sleep well, take regular baths with seawater, and eat well. For lunch we had Spanish potato omelette and for dinner a rice paella with artichoke and octopus.
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Transmitted by Fernando Assens using YB Connect (www.ybtracking.com)