After the catapult start from Las Palmas in fresh winds we logged 222 miles in the first 24 hours. The first day was windy and quite rough as we passed the bottom of Gran Canaria and Tenerife, up to 30 knots with out top speed clocked at 16.4 knots with a poled out headsail and full main. The first night at sea saw us follow the ?:northern" route on a heading between 270 and 290. The normal first night at sea - not very hungry, queasy stomach and little sleep as the boat rock and rolls its way downwind with plenty of noise associated with fast sailing. During the night we rolled in some headsail and put two reefs in the main.
We are supposed to get a daily emailed position report on all boats in the fleet but to date have not received so have no idea how we are going. We did check the fleet viewer section of the ARC website just before we lost reception at the bottom of Gran Canaria - this was interesting as it showed us behind a number of boats that we could see we were in front of by looking at the AIS. We then noticed that there are significant differences in the Yellowbrick tracking positions. Most of the boats showing in front of us had positions reported at 1600 hrs whereas ours was at 1420 hrs - in the meantime we had covered another 16 miles!

Just before dawn the next day (Wednesday) we saw the lights of a town high up on the south western island of Malpaso 30 miles off the beam. The last sighting of land for a couple of weeks! A fine day as we continued to follow the Predict Wind northern route that saw us work out to around 30 miles north of the rhumbkine in 20 -25v knots NE'lys with a rolling 2 - 3 metre sloppy sea but little real swell. During the afternoon we spotted two yachts behind us but they did not show up on AIS so no idea of whether they were ARC yachts or not. We did though find two other ARC yachts on AIS - the first a X-Yacht 65 10 miles in front on the same bearing and the second an Oyster 825 6 miles in front on the same bearing. So we figured that after 36 hours we must be doing ok if these much larger yachts in the Invitation Cruising division are so close to us.

Day two at sea (Thursday) is another clear sunny day, preceded by a full moon last night, the sea state has settled down so a lot more comfortable and glorious downwind sailing in 20 - 25 knots and clocking 9 - 10 knots on the log. The second 24 hour run was 220 miles so the miles are ticking by. Predict Wind has us on this bearing (around 255 sailing 160 degrees apparent wind angle) in 20/21 knots until 3rd December and then dropping down to south of the rhumbline as the wind veers with a forecast apparent wind angle of 120 degrees and 14 knots - that will be genaker time.

We suspect that we are with a relatively few yachts on the northerly course which is not the recommended course by the ARC weather guru's. There wisdom is head south towards the Cape Verde islands until the butter melts and then turn right for the run across the Atlantic - they say this is more comfortable but is also about an extra 200 miles. So running with the Predict Wind model will hopefully show we have made the correct routing decision.

Everyone well on board and Mike the second night did see the first happy hour on board so settling into the life at sea routine quickly.

Cheers
Pam & Keith