La Cigale - Day 15 - 3 December - Halfway there!

At around 3am this morning we hit the halfway mark, geographically speaking. Hurrah! Hopefully we are well over half-way to St Lucia in terms of time, now that we are flying with the trade winds, but it is extraordinary to think we are still closer to Cape Verde than to the continent of America.

We had the gennaker up all night for the first time. A risky tactic, given that the cat that recommended it to us, albeit monitoring for squalls on the radar and taking it down if the wind consistently reached above 18 knots, has just ripped theirs during the day. It also means the Skipper chooses to snooze with one ear open in the cockpit, but he reckons the peace of mind going that bit faster outweighs a restless night.

For those in need of a novel caffeine fix the morning after the night before, I can thoroughly recommend a full facial exfoliation of coffee grains, thanks to a spluttering splash ack from the salt water tap when rinsing out the filter jug. I then managed to land half a grapefruit skin in the dingy. Not too much of a surprise to the rest of the crew. "Don't worry Mum" reassured Catherine, "I threw an orange in there yesterday, and it just sat there and sunbathed!" Our poor deflated dinghy will be glad of a good scrub and a clean when we get to St Lucia - it may be a case of taking lots though, to see who does it!