Date: 30/11/2009 16:18:11
Latitude: 21.2
Longitude: -41.01
Wind and seas have calmed down out here over the last 24 hours which has made living on board much more comfortable. As we approach the area of the trough we are getting the winds that we expected - lighter. This is all very well as it is nice to be a little more comfortable, but of course the result will be less miles run towards St Lucia and Spinnakers bar!
One of the biggest things to happen to us, definitely to Rebecka anyway, was the arrival of Lucy's carrot cake. It was voted the best cake ever by Christian (well, it would be, wouldn't it!) but Rebecka was quickly addicted and has spent half the night searching the galley for the remains. Rebecka had even dispatched four separate search parties to look for it, until it was finally located at breakfast time this morning - you got it, carrot cake for Rebecka for breakfast. Who says we don't eat well out here? Actually, I was quite getting used to a good cooked English breakfast over the last couple of days, so returning to normal breakfast this morning was a bit of a shock.
Curious things seem to happen at night and Wheels (Sheila) is convinced she saw two aliens last night. Well, not exactly aliens, I think it started out that she saw two stars being 'snuffed out' (an American expression apparently) but it soon turned into aliens, not sure how! Why is Wheels called Wheels I hear you ask? Wheels sailed across the Atlantic with me in 2008 from Antigua to the Azores to the UK and on board with us cooking that year was Carly; apparently on British TV there is an advert for a car insurance company called Sheila's wheels, so obviously we nicknamed Sheila 'Wheels' and it has stuck ever since. Wheels is our senior crewmember and hails from near San Francisco, California, lives on a ranch with horses and loves doing crazy things like sailing across the Atlantic. Always seasick for the first day or so, Wheels always picks herself up and just keeps going: Wheels has developed into a damn fine helmswoman in the time she has been on board. Reporting a Lady's age would be unfair but suffice it to say that there are grown up children and lots of little grandchildren running around, so you get the idea. Independent and strong willed with an adventurous spirit she is a kind person with a smile and a nice word for everyone; what more could we ask for in a crew mate?
Sunday afternoon at Happy Hour, 1800, saw us reach the half way mark of 1,350 miles sailed from Las Palmas and 1,350 miles left to sail on the rhumb line to St Lucia. We celebrated with rose (can't find the French accent on this keyboard) wine and opened the competition for best guess of estimated arrival times into St Lucia. The spread is from Vladimir with the earliest time of 1200 next Sunday to 1800 next Tuesday from Ben. Some guesses were more technically worked out such as Simon who put a lot of thought and calculation into his arrival time of Monday at 1600 hours, whilst others such as Robert came completely out of the left field at 0832 and twenty seconds on Tuesday! Probably the sweetest was Rebecka who came up with 1515 on Tuesday, based solely on the fact that her fiancee would have flown in by then and could meet her on the dockside..... ahhhhh!
I refused to put down an ETA as I would definitely cheat and we would arrive right around my guessed time, but I did put in a word of caution - there are still 1,200 miles to sail, we still have to get across the trough and anything can and does happen at sea. What is for sure is that everyone is up for getting the best passage time to St Lucia since I bought the boat in 2001 - our earliest arrival was in 2001 with my wife Magali on board and we arrived in the early evening of the Monday. In 2001 we had high winds and took a real southerly course going right down to the Cape Verde Islands; this year we have so far been able to follow the rhumb, or shortest, line so saving on miles. If ever there was to be a year when we could possibly beat our best time, this is it!
Talk of sailing comfortably for the last 12 hours was making me nervous and from about 0200 this morning I couldn't get out of my mind that we weren't making enough progress towards St Lucia. 0400 and I couldn't wait any longer, so went on deck and started the gybe, turning the back of the boat across the wind together with Lucy, and Simon's watch of pilot Steve, Wheels, Ben and Alan. It sounds easy, but the watch on deck has never gybed before in the dark and there are a lot of sails and ropes! Ably assisted by the bright moon, in an hour we had the boat heading on the new course with the Swedish spinnaker up and setting us nicely on our way again to St Lucia. Having promised the crew that we would do as little spinnaker work in the dark as possible, because that is always when problems occur, the new watch on deck at 0600 were surprised to find a spinnaker up!
As we make progress to the west so dawn and dusk become out of sync with boat time - the sun rises later and later in the morning. The time in Las Palmas is four hours ahead of St Lucia and so to compensate for this we occasionally put our watches back an hour resulting in the on deck watches during the day each taking an extra half an hour on deck. Today we will put our watches back an hour, thus tomorrow morning the sun will be rising at 0600 rather than 0700 as today.
Ben's son Tim has his 20th birthday today, so Happy Birthday Tim from all the Northern Child crew! There are no birthday's on board this year, a rare occurrence on a long passage with 13 crew.
We have made slightly less progress towards St Lucia than we would have liked in the lighter winds, but have still managed to sail 187 miles towards St Lucia in the last 24 hours, with 1,208 miles left to run. Our next target is to break the 1,000 miles to go to St Lucia mark, which should happen sometime tomorrow afternoon/evening. All is well on board, a bientot, Julian, Northern Child.