Libeccio - Travelling in company, a virtual party mid passage and lightening the way

Hi, we are on the second day of our 290nm passage from Santa Marta to the San Blas Islands. The strong winds of the evening carried into the daylight and we decided that, as the forecast for the balance of the day was for 27 -30 kn winds, we would retire the mainsail completely and just use the furling genoa. This had the advantage that it would be a whole lot easier to decrease our sail area. So mid morning we did just that. For those of you that have read our blogs for previous trips you will know that generally things such as this do not normally go to plan. In today's case, the winds seemed to drop the moment we dropped the main. However, being conservative sailors we decided to keep the minimal sail area up through out the day- and the wind still remained low. At this stage our estimated arrival time had slipped from 6 am to 3 -4 pm. Although it is still light at that time, it is not the best time to pick your way through coral passes- so we needed to pick up speed and raised the main again- with two reefs in it.

One of the benefits of traveling in a rally is the sense of comfort you get knowing that your fellow participants are generally close at hand during these passages. This is the first time for us that we have actually had so many boats around us as we are sailing. Even in the original ARC passage across the Atlantic, after the first two days we didn't see another boat for over a week at a time. As I am typing this, we can see 6 boats on our AIS which means they are likely within 10 - 15 miles of us.

Today was also a first for Jane and I- a mid passage, virtual party. Each day we have two times where we are all on the SSB at the same time and channel- a designated Net controller will then go through a roll call to find each boats location and if they are all OK. Today's net controller, Bones, invited the fleet to a party on his boat- the catch being that we are mid passage. So, instead the party was held over the SSB. It involved each of the boats to sing a song, deliver a poem, ask a riddle, put on dance music... you get the picture. It was great fun and clearly shows some very talented people on the trip. For our part, we delivered a Ode to the World ARC- a catchy poem.

For the last 36 hours we have been aware of the bank of clouds that follows the coast line we are running parallel to. It is only at night time that we can see the lightening that is coming from these clouds. I have to admit, that it is just a bit weird us all sailing towards where the lightening is coming from. With the direction of the wind, we hope that the clouds will stay away from our course.

That is it for now, we are running a wing on wing sail configuration and hope to arrive at the San Blas mid morning- almost perfect for picking our way through the coral.

All best,