Steven and Shaun are fundraising for ORBIS by taking part in La Solidaire du Chocolat a trans Atlantic race celebrating the cocoa trade between France and Mexico.
We’re 14 miles from the gate now making about eight knots. Typically, there have been big squalls with absolutely no wind afterwards with a nasty north-easterly swell. It’s bloody horrendous with the boat wanting to move, but then the swell would just kill the boat. It was probably about two hours of torture yesterday. For the boats at the back it might not be a lot of fun when we get to the finish as all the parties will be over. Just a few tequilas and then people will start making their way home. Hopefully the Caribbean will be a bit easier as the last part of the Atlantic has been as full of headaches as the first part. We just take every day as it comes. We’re going to have a celebration tonight to mark finally seeing some land.
Yesterday morning continue under the large kite, until the clouds started to darken, nearly a perfect drop until we realized I had left the clutch on the tack line open. Off went the tack of the kite, so once again recovering the kite from the water, this part of the drop we have off to a tee, stern retrieval. Solent and first reef was the order off the day with speeds between 10-14 knots with small squalls and an ETA to St Barts of 31 hours. Then the clouds darken still and you could see the squalls coming, second reef and Solent furled away as the squall hit us, the second reef departed from the main sail and a batten popped out of its pocket on the main sail. By now the squall was 28-30 knots as we were putting in the third reef. The waves breaking over the boat are refreshingly warm, unlike European waters. As the wind and rain increased to 45 knots, it was like being hit with hail stones, visibility was around 100 meters, this lasted around 20 minutes. The rest of the day was a mixture of light and fickle breeze and the ETA to St Barts went from 31 to 48 to unknown..... The hole we managed to find around 23.30 UTC was to last nearly three hours, the mainsail was dropped to stop the constant bang and rocking of the boat. Then we were off again with the most fantastic light show. Thunder and lightning everywhere, a few electronic items were unplugged as a precaution. As most children learn, we were also counting between the flashes and the bangs to find out the direction of the weather, but all too often it was impossible to know which flash belonged to which bang. Over a 100 photos were taken and only three managed to capture any lightning.... the moon put in an appearance around 0500 UTC which helped with the weather ahead. Around 6.15 was the closest we came to the thunder and lightning with only a couple of seconds between them, I guess some will work out the maths between speed and sound and tell us it was hundreds of miles away.... just before 6am this morning another hole was found, again this seems to be in our skill set. Fifty minutes later we are on our way again on a heading of 282 @ 8.2 knots and an ETA of 24 hours for St Barts...ummm...somehow I think not.
Steven and Shaun are fundraising for ORBIS by taking part in La Solidaire du Chocolat a trans Atlantic race celebrating the cocoa trade between France and Mexico.
We’ve had a very pleasant night sailing and it’s a beautiful day this morning. We’ve got all the boots and clothes and oilies out in the cockpit trying to dry everything off. We’ve got about one meter or a meter-and-a-half gentle swell and 14 knots of breeze. The boat’s cruising along at eight knots. In fact, sun burn is the major concern at the moment. The problem at the moment is everyone is in the same breeze and doing about the same speed and this will probably continue until St. Barts. We’ve got a small list of jobs to do while the weather is quiet, nothing major at all. It’s a real shame about the Finnish team. If nothing else, our boat is very strong. We’re both fine although I fell across the cockpit and have a lovely bruise that I must take a picture of.
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