and smooth sail, time for everyone to recover a bit and sort out the
frayed nerves. This morning the sun is shining which brings the next set
of weather patterns into play. The cloud formation is now changing and a
huge bank of cumulus nimbus is building east of us. They also bring
squalls, but also thunder and lightning. Fun and games? No way. We
prepare for a possible lightning strike by tying a section of anchor
chain around the mast and let it hang about a meter in the water to
serve as a conduit. Lightning will normally strike the VHF aerial and
run down the mast to our distribution board, jump all the circuit
breakers and fry all our instruments. We also unplug the VHF aerial when
the thundeer and lightning draws close.
We have done excellent mileage through the storms and may still arrive
at St.Lucia on Saturday, but almost definately on Sunday. The wind has
gradually been veering or turning clockwise, placing the wind more and
more behind us. We are still but just holding on to a broad reach and
have lost some speed in the process. If it carries on veering we will
soon be on a run again, throwing both headsails to the wind. Our weather
forecast courtesy of our weatherguru back home shows stronger winds just
east of us and already the swell from that is starting to roll in. Not
much change of the stronger wind getting to us but we will feel some of
its effects.
Nick made a lovely pasta last night and added some fresh basil leaves
from one of our herbal plants we have aboard. We all enjoyed it
thoroughly even though it was completely vegetarian. We've had our lure
out yesterday as we have today but nothing so far. During stronger
weather yesterday I also demonstrated the hove to manouevre and everyone
had a change to execute this fairly easy exercise once you understand
what you are doing and why. 'Let Fly' is our nautical term today.Aboard
ship the order to let fly meant to let go quickly the sheets which held
the sails whereupon they would shake uncontrollably ( as a raging person
can do). The order was given to stop a ship smartly. In the navy a
junior ship was required to 'let fly her sheets' in salute to the
flagship. Let fly has since come to mean to loose one's temper, or
remonstrate angrily.
Our position at 10am was 07*41'N/053*17'W. We are 570nm from St.Lucia
and looking forward to spending a day or so there before our final quick
stop in St.Vincent and hope to be on our way to Panama by Monday next. A
week later we expect to arrive at Panama, as always depending on the
weather.
Hope your day had some lighter moments in it and that you could laugh at
yourself, even just for a moment. We often take ourselves so very
seriously.
Captain Paul
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