quietly from our anchorage between the other yachts, who's occupants
haven't stirred yet. Steven and myself did this part of the operation as
our two crewmembers had taken to town and returned just before
sparrow's fart, so no stirring there either. Made our way out of the
harbour under motor and headsail and Steven went back to sleep. I always
take the first watch when we leave a place for various reasons.An hour
later Nick showed his face, the wind is coming just off the beam; just a
breeze really but enough to propel us to eight knots. Decided to go first
reef main and full genoa and within half an hour we had the sails up and
took some extra effort to tweak them to perfection. And it is paying of
handsomely. Still in the shallows, the continental shelf is rather wide
around here, but we are drawing away from land and our heading is exactly
magnetic north. Our autopilot is set on windvane mode to ensure a constant
angle of wind through the sails resulting in a constantly good turn of
speed. Our next destination is St.Lucia and just under 1700nm away. Should
we get exceptional good weather and current we could be there in eight
days requiring an average of eight knots. It is a little bit optimistic
but sailing up the northern coast of Brazil allows for a bit of optimism.
Good currents and steady winds are some of the elements we rely on to
achieve such an average, but then there is also the equator and a taste of
the doldrums ahead of us and possibly some thunderstorms. We are going to
try our best within the safety boundaries to get to St.Lucia on Friday and
perhaps even St.Vincent. We can then do our business in St.Vincent on
Saturday and get cracking for Panama, which is about 1200nm down the road,
a week or less if all goes well. We have just crossed the 4000nm mark and
going stronger than ever.
We have been reminded by some of our friends back home of the epicness of
crossing the Atlantic and we never forget the sacredness of this crossing. A
lot of people take years of preparation before they set of on such a
journey. In Europe the sailors get together weekly for meetings, sharing
advice, information and building up the courage to cast off. And then they
will set of in small fleets, knowing that there is safety in numbers. They
all stay in contact daily and can come to anyones assistance should the need
arise. In our case we have an operations manager backed by a worldwide team
that we report to twice weekly, and availble 24/7 in case of an emergency.
They are the best in the world at what they do and have an impeccable safety
record maintained over many years. That is our back-up and and that is what
makes us the best at what we do. A group of charter bases covering the most
exotic and sometimes truly historic sailing destinations around the globe is
part of the company we keep. Yes, sometimes I think we have died and gone to
heaven, with sailing boats and all.
Nautical expression today is 'Maroon'.A corruption of the Spanish word
'cimarron' which means wild or unruly. It was the word given to the slaves
in the Spanish colonies of the Caribbean. Later it was adopted by pirates of
the area and came to describe their practice of settling unwanted men down
on an inhospitable shore. Fortaleza was not so inhospitable, but we did
loose out on some of the reasons we came here for. We didn't do the 5star
breakfast buffet this morning or yesterday morning, we didn't get to fill
our water tanks, but we did get some time to unwind and the biggest plus was
being able to skype home, even though the internet was very expensive and
unreliable. I managed to get a good session in this morning at 2am our time
and 6am SA time. We have also changed the time on our boat and are now 5
hours behind SA. We have the liberty to change our time on the boat based on
when the sun rises and sets, and we try to keep dusk and dawn as close to
6am and 6pm as we can.
And with that I wish you an awesome time till we cross swords again.
Captain Paul
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