Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Blog day 8

Hi All,

As Al said before, anyone not out here right now is missing out on a fabulous crossing! We passed the milestone of halfway yesterday, it is always a matter of opinion as to what exactly passes for halfway though!

You could argue it is the point at which you are half the distance to the finish that you were at the start in this case that would be about 1340nm to go, equally you could also make the point that you are halfway when exactly the same distance geographically from the start point as the finish line, this point would be reached earlier unless you happened to be on the rhumb line. There is also that you are halfway when half the elapsed time of the course has been sailed, with modern weather forecasting and accurate weather routing software with accurate polars this is possible to have a good guess at when a week from the finish, equally the same information can tell you when you have sailed half the distance through the water that is expected!

I am not particularly superstitious but would always like to err on the side of caution on such potentially premature celebrations, so we elected to pop the cork on the bottle when 1340miles to go, having already passed every other potential halfway milestone, i am pleased to report that we do not appear to have cursed ourselves and are still making rapid progress towards st Lucia and the rum punches on the dock that await on arrival. On that note, if anyone from the potential welcome committee is reading this, Ian would prefer a beer for his first pre finish drink, so if a Piton could be provided it would be very warmly received!

Having lead on the handicap for the whole race in all racing classes, we were finally bettered by the Kid who are showing scorching pace averaging up to 15kn at times, their modern planning machine needs to sail large angles downwind adding considerable distance to their track, but 3 days with a favourable wind angle has seen them decimate the entire fleet! It looks now that they have run out of angle and will perhaps lose some VMG (velocity made good- ie speed carried towards the rum, guess thats why the straighter route is called the Rhum line perhaps?!). Scarlet with our more slim posterior and extra weight (which she hides well of course!) likes to sail more down the waves which should offer us a shorter route to the finish, potentially giving a close finish on the handicap, we know when we think we will finish, but have not got enough data on the Kid to know when they will be sipping rum punches, time will tell!

I had promised Jules that we would fish if we got a comfortable margin in class, while we have potentially achieved this, it seems that the team are keen to push for overall glory, so the fishing line remains in its wrappers, i am not sure how we would manage to pull in a fish anyway as we are on occasion surfing at over 16kn, the best speed to date on this trip is 18.2kn, still a little way of our best ever of 23.5kn!

This year thus far has been particularly kind with the conditions we have had, i suspect there will be some rain squalls and associated complications to come, so far we have not had any rain at all! I have been running the watermaker longer hours to allow for showers! I have sneakily had a couple of showers so far, and the girls have been allowed to have a shower each to wash their hair, now perhaps it is time to open this luxury to the boys too!

Looks like dinner is soon to be served, and for some reason mine is always plated first, so mush finish up in a moment, i think it is fair to say our meals have been exceptional and up to usual ARC standards, despite not having my beautiful wife help in Las Palmas, i am delighted however that she is coming out to the finish this year instead, complete with Christmas decorations and lights!

I am sure Al will be back with hiss spin on the last few days very soon! Perhaps we will get a blog or two out of some others too.

Anyway bye for now from the good ship Scarlet and team Scarlet, Kelsey, Deanna, Ian, Al, Zoli, Randall, Jules and Me