We are on 3/4th of the voyage of 2800 NM and enjoy every day. For an outsider it may look boring and the same every day. This is however not the case. Somehow every day is different and brings new ‘excitements’.
As we make progress we keep a close eye on the DTD (Distance to Destination). The umber becomes more ‘understandable’ as it became below 1000 NM, 803 as I write this. The SOG (Speed over Ground), although the ocean is 5KM deep we still look at our speed over the ground, is an average speed of 7.5 knots (at times 8). Speed is everything (while keeping the boat together) because with the current average speed we will arrive in St.Lucia around happy hour on Thursday. So: every knot or mile counts.
The weather is not as constant as it would typically be. The low brought rain, headwind sailing, more North we experienced sea like weather. Now we have the trade winds again with steady wind. During the day we hardly saw the sun, at night we see a gazillion stars. Hopefully we will have sun tomorrow. The temperature is good: around 29c inside the boat and I think 27c or so outside. (at night as well).
Fishing: as we are approaching the Caribbean also the sea water is getting warmer. From a chilly 21c in Las Palmas to 27c here. It gets warmer every day. Perhaps this warmer water contains larger fish. After 4 or 5 Mahi Mahi’s and 1 Dorade earlier this week, we caught a serious Wahoo of 130cm.
When we left Las Palmas, our local time was equal to UTC. At 1/4th, halfway and 3/4th of the trip we adjusted our local time with one hour. And the last correction of 1 hour is when we arrive in St. Lucia. So three times we had days of 25 hours. We adjusted the clock at 1600 PM at the start of our happy hour. It gives us a useful extra hour ;-).
Lunch and Dinner: Yesterday we had a juicy burgers for lunch and beef-salad with Wahoo for Dinner. Not bad!!
Regards,
s/y Islay (ARC nr 88)
Peter, Marcel and Berend
Wahoo on board Islay 8 Dec 2012