[Captains Blog] Day 22 St Lucia!

Last night after several days becalmed, the wind decided to return and we could finally switch the engine off and give it a rest. The poor thing had been going non-stop and had done sterling service. We still have just under ½ tank of fuel left, plus the reserve jerry can, so we can pat ourselves on the back for that. We passed a couple of other boats yesterday who either had no fuel left or chose to be sailing purists and refused to put their engines on, either way, they were not making any real progress. We had to keep our progress rates up as we all have flights to catch this week.

So with the wind on our tail, we had full sails set to port and were bowling along very nicely, reefing down as night fell in case the forecast increase in the wind speed materialised. We finally passed the finish post in Rodney Bay at 08:36:20 this morning to a rapturous welcome from many of the ARC participants who had already checked in. It was a very gratifying experience. We were met in the bay by Elaine, Ed's wife who had hired a water taxi to take her out to meet us. No-one expected this to happen and it was a real surprise. We had several photographs taken by a professional photographer as we neared the bay, it will be great to see the results and might even be a keepsake to have pride of place in the office. We already have received a certificate of congratulation on a successful Atlantic crossing to add to the souvenirs.

[Captains Blog] Day 21 14.5N 58W Less than 200 to go

Last night we experienced the best ever sunset - simply spectacular - it seemed to us that the whole sky was aflame, and the red glow spread across the sky as far as the eye could see. As time went on, the colours got redder and deeper and it looked to is as though there was a volcano in the distance and the red clouds were like layers of molten lava across the face of the mountain. It was absolutely awesome.

Also, I don't know whether or not I witnessed the death of a star. I was up on watch between 03:00 and 06:00 and sometime in the period, there was a brilliant flash in the sky over towards the ENE from me. A single point object was glowing red, then yellow, then green, and then it disappeared altogether. The intensity of the light was very strong and that part of the sky was very bright. I'll have to look it up in the news; maybe I saw a moment in stellar history. It all seemed a bit star wars to me.

Our attempts to catch some supper have been fruitless, we managed to get a bite yesterday, quite a large fish leapt out of the water having taken a bite of the lure, but it didn't get hooked. Subsequent attempts to catch anything were to no avail.

We put the ship's clock back an hour last night to bring us in line with St Lucia time (UT-4). We are in the home straight now, the wind is due to return to us today and hopefully will send us on into St Lucia. We have been out of email contact with the world for a few days now, something has gone wrong on my laptop and the port that the modem uses thinks it is already busy. Thankfully, we have been receiving update texts from our friends in the real world that let us know the weather prospects and we have been acting on this info.

For the first time since leaving the canaries, we can see two other yachts on the horizon at the same time. The convergence of the boats on the Martinique passage to the north of St Lucia seems to be everyone's target. We should see more as the day progresses. We have half a tank of fuel left plus the 10 litres I have kept for emergencies in reserve. That should be plenty for the remaining part of the crossing, and there should be no issue here. The extra jerry cans I bought in Las Palmas were definitely a good move and have paid dividends. We have passed other boats that were progressing under sail alone, and not covering any distance. Perhaps their spare fuel quota wasn't great enough. The recommendation was for 5 days of motoring, we allowed for 7-8 in our calculations. Thank goodness we did.

We ate pork (and pork sausage) cassoulet for our dinner last night, just about all our fresh food stocks have gone now, and we are down to tinned products. Not too much of a burden. Fray Bentos night again tonight for our last evening meal aboard. Tomorrow we will hit the restaurants ashore ...

[Captains Blog] Day 20 14.5N 56.75W Becalmed with 240 miles to go

Frustrating! We are nearly there and the wind has died on us altogether. It was forecast, but the sight of the Atlantic Ocean as smooth as a millpond is somewhat unexpected. I was on the 6-9am watch this morning, and the sun hadn't risen by the time I was on duty. The atmosphere was positively ethereal. There was a mist hanging over the water, another yacht was forward on the horizon, with its tricolour masthead light twinkling through the gloom, the water was dead calm, and I was totally at peace with the world.

Then the sun came up, and I was treated to the most magnificent sunrise, a mackerel sky overhead that has since disappeared as the sun has warmed up the skies. The clouds have all but disappeared from overhead and the temperatures are rising. It is going to be a hot day. We have put 40 litres of diesel into the tank from jerry cans, which leaves us with 10 litres in reserve and a tank that is three-quarters full. Enough fuel to motor for 2.5 days. Hopefully that will be enough to sustain our progress towards Rodney Bay and hopefully the winds will pick up to allow us to turn off the engine and sail again.

Last night, after sailing over 2500 miles from Las Palmas, we ended up less than 1 nautical mile from the East Martinique mid-Atlantic weather buoy. We knew it was in our vicinity, but with all the hundreds of thousands of square miles of ocean, we ended up having to keep a sharp eye out for the yellow lights that would indicate its presence. It seems a bit like parking in a multi-storey car park where there is only one other car on the same floor, and you somehow end up reversing into it. Things like this never cease to amaze me.

[Captains Blog] Day 19 15N 54.3W Less than 400 miles to go!

A funny peculiar day yesterday - no wind, and what there was came from the west which meant we were heading straight into it. No real use from the sails, although we tried the new patented "Witting Wonderset", which basically utilises the foresail in the same way that we would use the main sail to enhance the use of the engine, trap whatever breeze might be available, and sneak a couple of extra tenths of a knot onto our speed. I spent the best part of 2 hours on my watch tweaking and twiddling the sails to get the best I could out of her in the vain hope of preserving our fuel a bit. No real success, the wind was being its usual fickle self and swinging either side of dead ahead. 

On the fuel front, as we have been somewhat becalmed and are likely to be so for another day at least, we are having to use the engine. We need to keep our revs down to 1200rpm to maximise our consumption rates per mile achieved. We currently have 3/8 of our fuel tank remaining plus 95 litres in jerry cans. Hopefully this will allow us to motor all the way in if necessary, but we are ever hopeful that mother nature will send us some trade winds to see us the final miles under sail. It is so frustrating that we are this close and the weather holds us up for an extra day or so. On the upside, it means we have a gentle roll to the boat instead of being thrown around inside the perpetual washing machine that has been our home for the past 3 weeks. We might even get some decent sleep.

Email has been playing up for days now, Mailasail apparently have some problems (courtesy of Bardeau, another boat fairly close by who wrote in their own blog) and so we are somewhat incommunicado. This blog will carry on regardless and will be uploaded to www.afloatonaboat.com as soon as we get the opportunity in St Lucia. In the meantime, life aboard goes on as smoothly as ever. The food stocks are beginning to look a bit sparse in some areas - breakfast cereals are mostly gone, a few weetabix and bran flakes left to start the day. Fruit juices are still plentiful, tinned products are still in abundance, so we won't go hungry. We might just have to eat some odd things at strange times of the day. However, we still only have a few days left before we get to our destination, and we know from prior experience that there is a good size supermarket in Rodney Bay to replenish our stores. Plenty of drinking water left too.

[Captains Blog] Day 18 15.1N 53.4W less than 450 miles to go!

Yesterday was a great sailing day until tea-time when we suddenly lost the wind.  We knew light winds were forecast but expected them in another 36 hours and could really have done with another 200 miles or so under wind power.  So we now have the dilemma about using the engine and our fuel reserves.  To the best of our calculations we have 180 litres of fuel left, which should equate to 90 hours of motoring at low revs.  And with just under 500 miles left when the wind failed, we needed 100 hours of fuel if we were to motor all the way.  So, it was a very close and a tough decision as to when we should / should not use the engine.  The consensus yesterday evening was that we would look to sail through the night on wind power alone but we abandoned that when our speed dropped to less than 2 knots.  So now we're motor-sailing on low revs and achieving 3.5 knots through the water, over 4 knots speed over ground (because of the current).

One "feature" of last night was the meteor shower in the Castor and Pollux area of the night sky.  And what a night sky: billions of stars on show with no light pollution to affect them and myriad shooting stars.  Something to keep us occupied in a night when nothing much else was happening.

We broke into the Fray Bentos meat pies for dinner yesterday.  Paul had sampled one once before but for the rest of us it was a new culinary adventure, probably better than we anticipated and it certainly filled a hole.  That said, Paul and my appetites are reducing as the weather gets warmer, although we haven't noticed a similar trend in Phil & Ed!

Our ETA given the light airs is now Monday maybe even Tuesday, although we are hopeful of regaining wind over the weekend.  And then it will be back into party mode after 3 "dry" weeks.  We were all discussing this today and agree that none of us has missed alcohol .... sailing is a good detox indeed.