Whitbread - log

Top of the mornin!

its excellent sailing again, its been so long over a month! bloody equator..  bloody engines  Over the last 24 hrs we have covered 180 miles , 'not so far' i hear you cry..... only an average of 7.5 kts. But all of it has been done under sail , so good not hearing the engine and feeling the boat move with motion of the paciffic , last night the sky was
so clear , even the miky way was dazzling, till the moon came out , she's nearly 2/3 rds full and you could read a book in the cockpit she was so bright. we had our big pink gennaker flying all night starting with light airs and
only doing 7 kts. gradually the wind got stronger as we found the trades, and were soon flying along at 11.5 kts!
such a differance from motoring, when crew find the helm boring. Not being on a watch myself means i can help out when the crew need something or dont want to helm anymore, so i normally do my fair share of helming but now i'm having to fight them for it!! Since sunrise the trade winds have been steadier and are now at 18 kts, right on the limit for our gennaker, so since 1 o'clock have had the no1 up and were still doing 10.5 kts. we will easly cover over 200 miles today.We gave our position over the ssb radio today , ( albeit on the higher freq. for yachts far behind!)which made us feel part of the rally again , we missed not being at the start and were gratefull there was another 8 boats left behind aswell. The crew are in fine form.... Marcel from has joined us for this leg and
he's a pleasure to have onboard he fits right in with the lads , their all as nutty as squirrel shit !! To add to our list international logs (English, Dutch, German, Swedish and manucian )Marcel wrote his in swiss yesterday.
Because i couldn't read a word of his log i'm not sure if he told you about our marlin? There was never a doubt that we could of landed him with a hand line but just to see a blue marlin leaping out of the water and thrashing around on his tail, knowing thats he's on the end of your line was cool. the line was 115 lbs and on the second jump he was free....the one that got away...

cheers

jeffers