6th December

23 20 N
74 31W

Weather: sunny changing to overcast, wind 8 to 18Knots E, waves 3 to 5 foot.

19 MORE SLEEPS

BIRTHDAY SHOUT OUT TO PAUL, MANY HAPPY RETURNS OF THE DAY.

We woke up to a beautiful morning, in a glorious anchorage with not another boat in the immediate vicinity. The sun was sparkling on the fabulous aqua coloured water making it twinkle sending prisms of colour everywhere, just the perfect start to the day. Gerry was up and tweaking the wind repeater instrument in the hope of finding a reason for it crapping out last night when I crawled out of bed at 6.45am. We had agreed that we wouldn't be going anywhere in a hurry today so I thought it was a good time to make crepes for breakfast, always a favourite in our household so I set to and prepared them. Crepes and coffee, a great way to start the day! Gerry hadn't discovered anything astounding with the wind repeater so it's still a guessing game as to when it will stop dead again. It was then time for Gerry to shower whilst I fiddled and typed yesterday's blog and got it posted and edited (for some unknown reason the text looks perfect when it goes to the server but somewhere along the line, as it gets published to the blog site, the formatting changes and I get a few strange things happening in the text which weren't there when it was sent and I then have to go to the blog manager site and edit the darn thing which takes time and effort!) Any way I got that done and then showered and dressed ready for the next part of the trip. Gerry had checked the weather forecast which predicted that we should have wind out of the NE at around 10 knots which meant that we should have been able to sail fairly easily to Mayaguana, our next destination which was about 120 NM away and would take us the best part of 24hours at a steady 5knots. 11 am, engine on, anchor up and we began heading into wind so that we could put the main sail up. It was a struggle as there is some sort of issue with the reefing line that was impossible to correct at that point but Gerry managed to get the main up whilst I struggled to keep the boat pointing into wind. My struggle is only due to the fact that this boat doesn't respond initially as quickly as our previous boat did but when it does respond it tends to do so in a huge movement which I then over correct in the attempt to keep on course, I will get it right eventually if Gerry doesn't kill me in the meanwhile! Once the main was up we got back on track and then it was time to deploy the jib and the stay sail, with all three sails up plus the engine running we were doing 6.5 knots, the wind of course hadn't listened to the forecast and was coming out of the east at 5 knots, making our plan of action difficult to execute. We wove our way through the coral heads and out of the channel to the open water in the hope that things would improve, we even turned the motor off for a while watching our speed drop to 1.5knots, time for the engine to go back on for a while. Gerry fiddled with sails and I took the photos off of our camera and labeled them ready to post to the gallery when we have internet again and Priss stayed below in her bed sleeping for the English Olympic team!
For a great deal of the day we have seen fickle winds ranging from 5 to 18 knots and coming mostly out of the east. We decided that as we are "cruising" we weren't in a particular hurry and could just go with the flow, without the engine on. Our speed has varied from 3.5 to 7.4knots during the rest of the day. The sea has changed from the fabulous clear aqua to an indigo with a few whitecaps as the wind has increased and whipped up a few waves. There have been a few grey clouds which were so low in the sky that I swear our mast would be able to touch them, they looked like sending rain our way but that hasn't happened so far.
Gerry has been below for the obligatory "snore o'clock", he slept in the quarter berth which has a small port hole into the cockpit. Priss was in the cockpit with me keeping watch and suddenly found the port hole open, her head disappeared into the hole and I quite expected her body to follow when she caught sight of Gerry but she backed out without investigating further - probably saving that for another day. Gerry has just reeled the fishing line in, yes, we have had it out again today to no avail, fish seem to be like the green flash, non-existent! I've posted the photo of yesterday's catch to prove that we did have a fish and in the hope that one of you fishing experts that are reading this can enlighten us to what sort of fish it was, and I don't need any smart remarks like it was "a Lucky Fish" thank you!
The sun is about to set, not that we will get a photo today as it's well hidden behind clouds.
We are continuing on towards Mayaguana through the night so I hope that we can continue to sail or the motor will be running whilst we try to catch a few zzz's.
I hope the next instalment has us safely into Mayaguana.