13th December
Very quiet this morning! I came on watch about an hour before sunrise to calm seas and very little wind. Needless to say we are motoring. Last stretch… about 260nm to our waypoint, at the most northern tip of St Lucia. Currently we expect to arrive there in the early hours of Sunday morning! Although, if the wind picks up as predicted on Saturday, we may fly towards the finish!
Another very different dawn with clouds stretched across the horizon. However, today, I think, will develop into cloudless skies and blazing sunshine!
Just so you don’t think it’s blue skies and sunshine here all of the time, I thought I’d better tell you about the last couple of days! After our great kite runs we encountered a different weather pattern - tropical storms! Overnight the cloud built and I woke up one morning to grey skies and wet decks. This continued throughout the day with squalls in the distance off our starboard side. The following couple of nights the radar gave us prior warning of some large squalls coming through and we sailed with a very conservative sail plan. Mostly a handkerchief of a main and the full or reefed Genoa, which is easy to furl quickly. Last night we saw our biggest system yet, which surrounded the boat. However, apart from large wind shifts and tropical rain, all was fairly calm.
The lightning shows, however, have been magnificent. Sheet lightning has lit up the sky on all sides with occasional fork lightning spearing the clouds. All this quite a distance from us.
Yesterday we celebrated only 500nm to destination, and Mark’s wedding anniversary (43 years - Congratulations Jane!). So the second bottle of champagne was recovered from the fridge and enjoyed, albeit under cloudy skies!
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