Cerulean of Penryn - Random jottings from Cerulean

DATE:2018-12-03 14:00Z
TITLE: ARC+ LEG 2 DAY 13
LOCATION: 14:16 54:48
AUTHOR: Richard Rowley
BODY:

Distance to go 355Nm, Distance Sailed 1832Nm

Well i hoped you like my little of yesterday and it did not detain you long?

I did the twilight watches last night sunset and sunrise, or more interestingly for me I watched the stars come into view and disappear. I was on 6pm - 9pm and 6am to 10am, on a clear night with no moon it is fabulous to watch the stars and planets to appear, the moon rose with a thin crescent at a about 4am (not on my watch). doing the evening and morning twilight watches is interesting as you can really see how the stars rotate around the pole star, or Polaris, which is hardly visible from this latitude and is very low in the sky just above the horizon directly to the North. my old friend Orion was the first constellation I saw that I recognised, and this was just after dark and it was directly behind, due east. When I came back on watch at 6am I then found Mars slightly west of south with its distinctive red glow, by then high in the sky, and Orion had rotated round and was in front of us to the South West, and by now the Giant Bear had got out of his slumber. and was behind us, upside down and to the NE of us. Venus had also arisen and was keeping the moon company I managed to take a sextant sight of the Venus, I have not done the maths yet , but i am sure I will find that Venus is in the correct position...we could be anywhere!!!

Update on the wildlife...we had a massive party last night on board with guests form other boats turning up making a lot of noise mess and getting drunk etc...only joking we have not seen another boat for days now...but if we are lucky we might be passing one of our fellow ARC+ yachts very soon :)))...not that we are racing, just want to get there before all the rum punch goes

What I meant was the natural wildlife. We have started seeing flying fish again and the same type as before with a black topside and silver underside and black 'wings' but this morning out of the 4 fish that had jumped on board overnight two of them where very different being silver with gold stripes the wing fins being stripped the same as well. I have also seen a couple of sea birds, they look like the gannets we see in the English Channel, but these are bigger and have black wings feathers on the leading edge and around the head, unlike the ones I am used to which have a yellowish head. Hopefully we see some frigate birds soon and may be some dolphins and whales...may be.

We are moving along at a pace now, 7.5kts - 8.5kts through the water but we seem to have about 0.5kt of current against us which is a bit strange as the North Equatorial Current should go to the west and we should be in it now ggggrrr not sure what is going on with this, whether or not the current really is back to front our our instruments are misreading and misleading us I really do not know, whatever the upshot is that is it knocking 0.5 to 1.0kts off our speed over ground which does not help. It is quite windy with Easterly force 5 to force 6. the swell is perhaps 3-4m and not too uncomfortable. We have upped our pace and have more sail out than we had earlier on during the voyage, if we carry on at this pace we could arrive St Lucia on Wednesday 5th Nov. The bosun has just let more sail out...I thing he is trying to make us fly...

Enough of my ramblings for now

Fayre wynds and kynd seas

Capn't Ward

Cerulean of Penryn

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At 03/12/2018 12:48 (utc) our position was 14°14.74'N 054°39.66'W