Albatross - YB Connect Message from Fernando Assens

Dec 10 - 21th Day at Sea

All is well. We are 189 miles from St Lucia, and Las Palmas is 2534
miles behind us.

St Lucia course is 272° but, with the wind coming from 90°-120° we were only able to keep a course of 285°-315°, it was time for another "chicken jibe". And predictably, shortly after we jibbed, the wind veered to 70°-80°. Jibing again!

We are two days away from full moon, and during my shift, at 4:00 am GMT, we were steering straight towards it, and then, at 5:00 am, after the moon disappeared on the horizon, we steered to Orion, until the clouds covered all the stars and it became pitch dark.

With a double reefed main and half the jib, the waves coming from behind, and the wind around 18-20 knots we surfed down some giant waves at 8-9 knots. Wave surfing in the dark felt exhilarating, like a roller coaster

At 8:03 am GMT we were 289 nautical miles (333 statute miles) from St Lucia. The distance of the Chicago to Mackinaw race, which I have been racing for the last 8 years. This is familiar territory and will be a piece of cake from now on!

During the last three weeks we observed very curious cloud formations, including small completely black clouds that come from aft and overtake us, sometime after delivering a few drops of rain

Now that we are 36 hours from St Lucia, we better clean ourselves up. Another bucket of sea water while seating on the floor of the cockpit of the heavily pitching boat did the job. Which reminded me of the difference with Robin Knox-Johnson, the Brit that completed the first solo non-stop circumnavigation, which in his book, A World Of My Own, describes his "showers" as jumping from the bowsprit of his boat, Suhaili, swimming really hard parallel to her, until he caught a sheet he was trailing astern, grabbing it, and hauling himself back on board.

During our daily session of listening to SSB cruisers radio, a sailboat reported spotting a whale nearby, and most of our fellow boaters complained of the heavy waves and pitching motion. One described it as feeling like a yellow plastic duck in a giant moving bathtub. In retrospect I regret not having an SSB radio for this trip. It would have been great to participate, rather than just listen on the Sony short wave radio. We were tempted to write an email to the host boat telling them, hey guys, we love your program, we are your biggest fans, can you read this message from the crew of Albatross on your broadcast today? But it felt a bit goofy and never wrote to them.

During the whole day we sailed with two other sailboats within a few miles from us. We expect in the next 36 hours to start seeing many more.

In the evening, after dinner, 20-30 dolphins swam with us for about 20 minutes. They looked very different than the ones in the Mediterranean or the west coast of Africa, they were bigger, darker,and had no beak. In fact they looked more like orcas. Perhaps they were orcas not dolphins.

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Transmitted by Fernando Assens using YB Connect (www.ybtracking.com)