It is Wednesday 25th January and we had a good first
night at sea moving at about 5.5 knots on average, more than we expected from
the forecast. During our first 24 hours we managed about 135 miles, about 3
hours of that under engine.
Mearra Neida, the Finnish World ARC boat came up behind us
quickly at about 1100 this morning with their spinnaker up – so there was
nothing else for it but to get our gennaker out. Now we are going very fast, but
are heading just a bit south of our required course which is almost due
west to Salvador. In fact we are heading for Rio de Janiero
but at this stage its the speed that counts and the great circle route does take
us south anyway.
Mearra Neida is a little longer than Firefly and dare we say
it – even more sporty - so they did gradually haul us in and get to within 100
metres. Theirs is a normal spinnaker so they can sail a bit lower on the wind
than we can - so having got close and taken a photo (we hope) they headed off on
their preferred course and are now, at about 1600, 3 miles further
north. It is actually unusual to see other yachts on passage even on a
rally so we doubt we will see them again.
We had a radio net this morning and managed to contact all the
boats currently underway. Carango and Into the Blue are relatively nearby having
left about the same time. Resolute and Trillium are 300 miles ahead as they left
2.5 days before us. Despite being in ‘racing’ trim we are making water today –
the washing water is reasonably full but we ran low on drinking. Firefly has
separate tanks with the pressurised system for washing and manual hand pumps for
drinking - a good system. Plus we also carry plenty of spare drinking water in a
couple of jerry cans as well as the ubiquitous bottles of mineral water stored
in all kinds of places, some under the floor.
Unusually the predicted dates are slightly off on the
programme for this part of the WARC. The programme indicated that the
expectation was for the leading the yachts to leave St Helena on Tuesday 24th
(which we did). And then arrive on Tuesday 31st – that would be just 7 days for
1900 miles in an area of lighter winds! Quite a few people booked flights based
on the programme, including Gareth, without checking the detail. So its going to
be a bit fine. However we think it will take us 12 to 13 days so will be in with
a day or more to spare before his flight out on February 7th. In fact we are
anticipating good winds from now until Sunday and will then get a light spell
from Monday to Wednesday. We have plenty of fuel so will motor if we can’t keep
up a reasonable speed when it goes light.
Our food provisioning and preparation has started well – our
first 2 lunches came from the doggy bag we took after the Charabanc Tour on our
last night at St Helena. Peter cooked an excellent sausage, vegetable and pasta
caserole and Gareth is resting at present in preparation for undertaking a prawn
stir fry this evening.
It is lovely out here today and no doubt the weather is
considerably better than it is at home in England. However, as Firefly is on the
last but one long stretch the World ARC Paul is really looking forward to the
shorter distances Firefly will have to cover once we reach the Caribbean and
then spending summer of 2017 at home in the UK. However for now its best not to
think about how far it is to Grenada – about 4000 miles from here!
Paul, Peter and Gareth