Shepherd Moon - Close shave

For those of you following the YB tracker, you can see that we're on the move again. Our all too brief visit to Colombia surpassed even our high expectations. The country is vibrant, the people are lovely and it's ridiculously cheap. Most of our time was spent doing minor repairs and re-stocking the food cupboards, but we did manage to take a trip up the mountain to visit a coffee plantation. Jacob and I also visited a local barber's shop. Just in case you ever find yourself sitting in a barber's chair in Colombia, it's worth noting that "numero dos" doesn't translate quite as you might expect. In fairness to the barber, he did double check, but only after he'd cut a razor-width swathe around the side of my head, reducing it to the kind of stubble most men could grow overnight (not me, I hasten to add. I once tried to grow a beard and it took weeks before anyone even noticed my efforts).

I'm not sure if there was still too much caffeine in my system from the trip up the mountain, or whether I was trying to make up for being three days late arriving, but we made a complete hash of the start for this leg. The sun was shining and there was just the gentlest of breezes ruffling the surface of the water, and so ignoring the forecast, I decided that the conditions were perfect for the gennaker. It didn't take long for the conditions to become anything but perfect, and so with Shepherd Moon leaning over at an alarming angle, we sheepishly rolled it away again, hoping that no one had noticed our huge blue and turquoise sail.

The rest of the trip has been largely uneventful. Strong winds and big seas giving way to more manageable conditions before the strong winds returned, this time with thunderstorms for company. With flashes of sheet lightning all around, Vanessa bundled the laptops into the oven. I'm not sure if it really offers that much protection from a strike, but it keeps them toasty.

Yesterday afternoon we were trundling along with just the genoa out when we were called by another boat, warning us they were about to overtake on our port side. I had been feeling sick all morning and, as a result, lethargic but this was a call to arms. The wind had dropped sufficiently to break out our beloved Blue Water Runner. We had re-run the new dyneema halyard whilst in Santa Marta and so it was renewed confidence that we hoisted it up and let the two halves unfurl. Or partially unfurl. We had managed to loop one of the two sheets around the wrong side of the sail, and so our racing sail change turned into a reverse-knitting exercise. With the knot undone, the sail filled and we were on our way. We kept the sail up until the early hours of this morning, in winds of between 15 and 20 knots. Even when it reached 25 knots the sail still coped, driving Shepherd Moon along at between 8 to 9 knots. The first-mate's nerves were coping less well, however, and so with 15 miles to go to the finishing line, we furled the sail and got it safely down below. No broken halyards, and no leaps into the sea.

As it turned out, it was a great decision. Each boat had been asked to predict their finishing time before the start, and we had guessed 07:00:00. For a while it looked as though we might be early, but with just the genoa up and the wind dropping away occasionally, we had to drive really hard for the line, eventually crossing at 07:00:30. We are now tucked up in an idyllic anchorage, surrounded by small islands, thick with palm trees and fringed with white sand beaches. At least it would be idyllic if we hadn't bought a dose of UK weather with us. It's misty, raining and grey. Hopefully the sun will come out to play tomorrow. It's only a day away, after all
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At 14/01/2018 14:12 (utc) our position was 11°31.70'N 073°48.80'W