Monday 4th December
So I said yesterday that we had not seen a squall yet, and then this morning at 715am we saw our first two show up on the radar! Protocol was to wake the captain as we had been sailing all night downwind, gull-winged & need two people to adjust the sails. Rich came up & we made a plan. The main was already reefed (following our conservative, back-of-the-pack sailing tactic ;) ) so we removed the barber hauler and preventer line to change from a downwind setup, reefed the Genoa and got ready to dodge the squall! We only had to watch out for an hour or so, by which time the sun had risen & the bad weather cleared. Wind & swell have both increased today, wind has been 15-20kts all day so our average speed has got to have got better.
Today Gisele reeled in her first mahi mahi! She was so excited as had lost two in recent days. We had a great eating day - yellowfin sashimi & rice for lunch (amazing) & delicious Blue Marlin tacos with slaw & chipotle mayo for dinner (thanks Lynnie!)
We also hit a milestone today - less than 1000nm to go! We’re on the home stretch - the final third! - & will be counting the miles down now until we reach Rodney Bay Marina in St Lucia. We also realised that the second half of our journey (measured by the mid-point longitude) will always be quicker because we’re now moving in a straight line toward our destination, whereas the first half included a 600nm hockey stick curve south down past Cape Verde before we started to head west. We can see Jet Lagged off to our starboard & another non-ARC boat “Exclusive” up ahead, as we roll into the night shifts. There’s some lightning flashing off to our port side & the swell is getting bigger, so it’s nice to have some company out here!
Uno out.
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