Apologies for the radio silence!
Sailing has been interesting, tough but rewarding over the past 2 days and our last blog. We are all in good spirits and loving being out here on the water.
Starting from the night before last and following another unsuccessful day of fishing with the green lure (the lure has now been relieved of duty), we went in to a squally nights sailing with very different conditions experienced for each of the 3 watches. There were multiple sail changes as the wind shifted, increased and dropped driven by passing clouds. This was pretty taxing and required constant sailing input (not an autopilot and watch for shooting stars kinda night) to keep the boat moving and pointing relatively in the right direction.
The day broke and the conditions remained the same, with the weather files not seeming to match any of the wind we were seeing we continued to make towards the Carib. We seemd to be on a good luck streak with all the large rain clouds about passing behind or ahead of us, I guess it was only to be expected that when one would finally catch us it would make up for all the ones that had missed.
Having been monitoring one particular cloud containing a lot of electrical activity we gybed away to head south only to have our route blocked by another large dark cloud. These two clouds closed in on us leaving us nowhere to run and hide. Very quickly the wind went from 8knts to 35+knots just in front of the massive cloud that covered half the Sky and contained a lot of electrical activity. White caps and a pretty messy sea. I was on helm, 3 reefs and code 5 and we were trucking (we furled pronto). Straight after that an amazingly funny comedy moment in biblical rain (less than 2 boat lengths vis) when my life jacket auto-inflated, hilarious!
Last night was really tough, with the left over sea from our big squall and max 3 knots of wind it made sailing impossible as the boat was thrown around uncontrollably with no chance of the sails filling. We experimented with multiple sets ups;
Main only
Jib only,
Main and jib
No sails up
We finally settled on 1 reefed main sail sheeted on hard and the boom triangulated to stop it bouncing about, then after some negotiation with the pilot and its set up we pointed straight at our destination at a princely 1 knot! I took on a full night shift on deck as the lightening cloud we just left lit up the sky all night in the east, as above us the moon shone and the stars twinkled clear as dimonds in the night sky.
FISH!!
We are banned from fishing until tomorrow by the big cheese of food and storage (Nia) as we caught a tuna yesterday! This is Louis’ first fish that he reeled in onboard Rush! Tonight we will be on our second tuna dinner. Onion, garlic, olives, capers, sun dried tomatoes and seared tuna tossed through Penne, Ian dreamt it in his sleep, sounds Italian enough to be legit.
Our route timing has taken a bit of a hit due to the last 48 hours messing around and the many hours of no wind we experienced last night. Got today’s position report and unless we were just super unlucky at our exact position some of the boats look to have deployed the iron topsail the last day or so, we were slowest in the fleet!
The forecast looks tricky for the coming days as we continue to negotiate the high pressure ridge ahead but right now we are in a nice clean Atlantic swell with 5-8 knots of wind and pointing just south of the Caribbean. Life is good, the sun is out and we have some nice food on the go. It’s great to think we have got so far and haven’t used the engine once no matter the conditions. Sailing all the way across the Atlantic in Rush feels like we are really giving her the opportunity to stretch her legs and she is in turn looking after us well.
All the best,
Alan
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