Yet another beautiful day at sea with slight seas not much swell and 15 - 20 knots from the ESE. We hit the pre-agreed gybe angle i.e. sailing away from St Lucia at midnight (Friday/Saturday) and gybed away onto port tack, poled out headsail sailing at 230 degrees against 238 required making 8 plus knots. Over the last 24 hours we covered 197 miles on the log and 191 miles on distance to go so pretty much making the rhumbline course.

During the afternoon we tried carrying the A3 as a spinnaker - it worked for a while until the sheet popped from the pole. So started all over again, this exercise took most of the afternoon as this happened 4 times. In the end packed the A3 away, back to a poled out headsail and a beer, and making 7 - 8 knots under the control of Angela (previously George). A relatively easy day, newly baked bread at lunch, Pam a lot happier we have the brochure weather at last. Sea temperature 27.8!

We are still hanging onto the lead in our division (Class A cruising) and have moved up to second on the overall cruising fleet (194 yachts) having got past Dreamer an Oyster 575 today but still
some 50 plus miles behind Amoress a Swedish owned Swan 48 (not in our division).

One interesting aspect of sailing across the Atlantic is getting used to gnometric charts (where lines of latitude and longitude are depicted as they actually are on the surface of the earth) as opposed to the mercator charts where lines of latitude and longitude are depicted as straight lines. We started at a latitude of 27 degrees and finish at St Lucia with a latitude of 14 degrees and yet we have sailed in a mostly westerly bearing. Even now less than 500 miles to go we are still at 18 degrees north. We have used the gnometric Atlantic chart to plot out position every day and also to calculate our bearings (thus checking on the chartplotter GPS). So we have a big drop to the south while sailing on a bearing of 238 degrees.

At this stage looking at an arrival overnight on Monday 10th December or Tuesday morning the 11th. With 470 miles left at this stage we are looking to our arrival. Weather wise it looks as though we will have around 20 knots from the ESE all the way in so flat off running for us again and probably a couple of gybes left.

Everyone well on board.

Cheers
Pam & Keith