Date: 26/11/2009 16:11:30

Latitude: 22.47
Longitude: -27.31

Another night, another few miles towards St Lucia completed. Well actually, more than a few. The winds have been really kind since leaving Las Palmas and the lowest wind speed we have seen momentarily is 14/15 knots true, and in reality the average strength has been in the 18 – 22 knot range, all from a great direction and behind us. Combined with a moderate sea state we have had a remarkably positive start to our Atlantic crossing, ARC 2009.
 
Ah, I see that I'm using words like moderate, perfect, great, kind regarding the wind. There's always a catch, so I decided to shake it all up a bit and get the adrenaline flowing again, life was just too comfortable! Up with our yellow and blue downwind, lightweight racing spinnaker and now life is suddenly a bit more on the edge. Christian's on watch of Robert, Vladimir, Juha, Rebecka and Steve Nelson have been wrenched from their comfortable existence of sailing along comfortably under our large genoa on a pole, and are now having to tame the beast. This is an exceptionally pretty spi, beautifully cut by North's,  she is not only an eye catcher but also remarkably powerful, probably about 190 square metres of spinnaker material with large imposing shoulders.
 
When we have a spinnaker flying in these sort of winds, we are really on the edge of what our novice Atlantic crew can keep under control. It feels like Northern Child has now had her turbo boost switch applied and we have ratcheted up our speed a knot. All the time this enormous sail is trying to pull the top of the mast around the sky, the massive lead keel bites in and gravity pulls us upright again. We storm our way through the Atlantic swells, calls of 'wind' (in order to wind the spinnaker back in again) from the trimmer resulting in lots of furious winching from the grinder. The wind is back up to around the 22 knot mark and the crew on watch are earning their lunch! 
 
Did I mention our large genoa? Oh yes, the repair was completed just before last light Wednesday, and then we set the sail out on the pole to starboard and immediately noticed a gain in boat speed - just the perfect sail for the long, dark night hours. The photo doesn't show the repair very well, but you should be able to see a repair line between the two bottom corners of the sail, about 5 metres long. We calculated that the repair took a continually revolving team of two or sometimes up to four crew members three days to complete. Even better than seeing the repair hold when the sail first went up, was the realisation this morning that it had lasted all night and not deteriorated at all....

Genoa Number 1 repair

One of the most important things on an Atlantic crossing is the food and this year we are lucky to have Lucy cooking for us. The better half of the Christian and Lucy double act (ha, says Christian), Lucy has just graduated from Imperial in London with some impossibly good degree, and had to choose between getting a proper job in an office or taking a couple of years out, buying Northing Child with Christian and setting off around the Atlantic Circuit - hard choice! The smells coming up from the galley are tempting in the extreme, and we are literally eating our way across the Atlantic - This is not a low calorie experience! Lucy at work in a rolling galley
 
Landmarks are important when you are sailing a minimum of 2,700 miles and we crashed through our first big barrier this morning: there are now under 2,000 miles to go. Still quite a lot of ocean ahead of us, anything can happen. As I send this log we are sailing happily along in good bright sunshine under our big, colourful spinnaker. We have a sailed really great 197 miles in the right direction towards St Lucia in the last 24 hours, another consistently high mileage run. All's good on board. A bientot from Northern Child, Julian.