Sailing Nicely

We're approaching a week aboard and all is well. The wind gradually filled in and we had a night reaching fast, north of the rhumbline, to keep the apparent wind. This morning we switched to our downwind rig of poled-out stingray.

Our 7th crew member, Wendy, also started to do some work after, frankly, being a bit lazy for most of this week.

Our rivals on Truenorth are quite close ahead, but the fleet has thinned greatly over the last few days with only 2 other boats visible on AIS

Andromeda Galaxy

The stars on night watch have been so bright, especially the last 2 nights as we've had no moon. 

We have found the great spiral of the Andromeda Galaxy,  our closest neighbouring galaxy. It's just visible with the naked eye, but with binoculars you can see an elliptical smudge of brightness, quite different from the stars we see around it. It lies between Cassiopea and Pegasus ( see Bridget's diagram).

The Andromeda Galaxy is 2 million light years away. That means that the light we are seeing from it left Andromeda 2 million years ago, and it has taken that long for it to reach us here on earth. That's a mind boggling long way away!

Daily routine

The morning sees the crew gradually getting up after night watches. A late breakfast.

We check on the boat things such as fresh water supplies, battery charge, the rig, navigation plan for the day, and turn on Starlink to get updated comms including weather forecast and ARC boat updates.

Domestically we do a fruit and veg check, restock the fridge, make bread, and yoghurt. Maybe even do some laundry! Foredeck exercise session.

At 12 noon it's radionet on the SSB. Here's Rob taking a relaxed approach!

The afternoon passes with more recreational activities such as

Fishing, reading, sleeping, crosswords, ukulele practice, chess

We're having a lot of fun

More sails = go faster

We have headed up onto a beam reach to improve the apparent wind, and by adding the staysail to the sailplan (mainsail, stingray doubled up on port, staysail) we have added another knot of boat speed towards St Lucia 

A daily rig check includes using binoculars to check for any chafe of the spinnaker halyard at the top if the mast, as demonstrated by Bridget

All is well on board

A gentle day at sea

We're still in light airs, motoring when our speed drops below 3.5 knots, when the boat starts to slop around. But since 2am we have been in a lovely breeze, enough to fill the stingray.

We're close behind the Scots on Truenorth and doing our best to catch them up!

Stowaway on board

We have a very small stowaway, hoping he will manage the trip

A swim in the deep ocean blue, and sunsights

Dolphin watching

Motoring

A quiet day at sea. The wind died at 8:00 and we've been motoring since.

Nonetheless, a v good with bread making, water making, lots of dolphins and a crew swim.

Sushi day

We are motoring today in a calm sea, the swell is long and only a couple of metres high. So it's not too tricky to make sushi- things stay on the table when you put them down!

We feasted on sushi made with yesterday's catch of Mahi Mahi 

Night watch

It's 4:30 in the morning. A cloudy sky above has blanketed out the moon and stars. It's dark.. There's one tiny white light on the horizon in the distance off to my right,  the masthead light of a boat ahead.

But at the bow, there are flashes of light and movement. 3 dolphins are playing in Tintin's bow wave, each with a fine cloak of bright phosphoresence that trails just behind them and marks their path. They dart away, then back again, swapping places, on port then on starboardside, their weaving movement appearing effortless and graceful. It looks such fun.

Foredeck gym

By popular request, the Bums and Tums class is back!

James has made the first saucepan boatbread of the trip. It smells so good.

All is going well. The Bluewater runner aka Stingray is pulling us along very nicely in 12 knots of wind from the NE. There are still a few other yachts in sight. We're expecting this breeze to continue until it lessens tomorrow afternoon. By the weekend we hope to pick up the trade winds of 15-20 knots 

Backgammon on the aftdeck

Fish Bash Bosh

We were under engine from the early hours of the night due to very light airs, but have had a lovely afternoon of gentle sailing with the cruising chute.

3 hours after putting out the line, James caught us a Mahi Mahi  (dorado), what a great start!

First night

Gentle breezes at the start yesterday gave us some lovely sailing well into the evening. This picture was taken by the Canadian boat ahead, and shared via WhatsApp with Starlink. It's so different having internet availability. It means we can update the blog easily, get weather information and keep in touch with home and with other sailors. It uses a fair amount of power, so we are turning it on for approx 20 mins twice a day.

We were treated to a stunning  sunset too.

We have been under engine for several hours now, the sea is calm and there's not much wind.

Beautiful weather for the start

Thinking of you at home with storm Bert blowing.  Luckily we are far enough south to miss its fury

Off to the start

Re-introducing Wendy the wind pilot

Skipper's briefing

At the briefing today we had a look at the weather with the legendary Chris Tibbs. This synoptic chart is a forecast for 72 hours from yesterday.  You can see storm Bert clearly. We are a long way south, but the tail end of Bert depression has squashed the Azores high pressure system slightly. 

As a result we will have gentle to moderate headwinds after our start tomorrow lunchtime, abating and veering by the evening.  We'll head towards the Cape Verdes in light airs and expect we may motor a bit in the first week. As we head south the NE trades will kick in, when we will head west towards the Caribbean. 

Red sky at night....

Sailor's delight

Team photo

James, Rob, Bridget,  Sophia and Bea (mistaken as one big family by a few. I am delighted to have 2 more fabulous 24 yr old daughters)

I'm behind the camera : )

Sea Labs

Together with several other ARC boats, we have volunteered to participate in the Sealabs project. Twice a day we'll be taking seawater samples, using a probe to measure temperature,  salinity and 3 other parameters. The data gets sent to a university databank where it's available for research.

This is Pinot telling us and the other Boreal crew (Perak ta, from Brittany) about the project.

No scurvy for us!

An early foray to the market yesterday,  and lovely Melodie helped us find the freshest of fresh fruit and veg at her stall. 

It was delivered to us in the afternoon,  ready to be washed, dried and stowed

Boat prep fatigue!

6 crew for 3 weeks = a lot of food shopping. After this afternoon's foray to the shops we all needed a lie down!

Anode day

To make sure Tintin doesn't dissolve, we need to change to zinc anode on the end of the propeller shift a couple of times a year.  Today James and Bridget took to the water in scuba gear to do the anode change,  and to scrub the hull free of mussels and barnacles. 

A job well done!

More food shopping, a visit to the border police to clear out of Spain, winch servicing, and fitting anti chafe covers to the spinnaker sheet ends, were some of the other jobs done today.

4 Days to the start

 We've now got 4 days to the start of the ARC.  We've ticked off loads from our lists, stuck to the saloon wall.  Much of the victualling has been done and stowed with just fresh fruit, veg, diary and meat to come.

The weather forecast for the start has varied over the last few days, but it seems to be settling on gentle winds from the wrong direction.  However, the forecast will proably change again before Sunday.  It's all to do with the speed at which a low pressure system reaches the eastern Atlantic a couple of hundred miles north of us.

Tonight is a fancy dress party.  The skipper has foregone this opportunity to dress up in green and wear a wig in favour of writing this blog.

We tested out scuba kit prior to cleaning the bottom tomorrow.

We did some foredeck training to get to know the ropes:

And now the rest of the crew have gone off to party..

Grab bag sort out and mast climbing

The boys succeeded with the watermaker pump fix, much to our delight.

Meanwhile we packed the grab bag - to be taken if we have to abandon ship and take to the liferaft.

It is full of useful bits of survival kit that we hope we will never need to use. 

Next, up the mast. Bridget and Sophia taped protective antichafe covers (swimming noodle floats) to the crosstrees to prevent the mainsail from chafe when we are running downwind with the mainsail fully out.

We finished up at the dinghy park for a sundowner beer with other ARC sailors, a good way to get to know others. We met a French crew who are also sailing a Boreal, and the Truenorth team.

A busy successful day!

A trip to the market

I made a recce this morning to the market. The traders are happy to deliver to the boat which will save a lot of legwork. You can see that Las Palmas is a great place to stock up! We will get dry stores from HiperDino, the supermarket down the road, which sells anything you might want.

One week to fix the watermaker

The job list is up on the saloon wall, top of it is to fix the water maker. The magic machine is driven by a pump that's powered by the engine. The bolts fixing this pump to the floor were failing, so the pump was moving around: no good.

With invaluable help from Steve Withers, parts were brought out by Bridget so that the pump can be fixed back in place on flexible mountings.

Rob and James are on the case today.

We will manage fine without the water maker if needs be; with it we will have the luxury of less stringent rationing of water, including occasional showers.

The crew is complete

Bridget and Sophia have arrived safe and sound. Hooray!

Today's carnival ARC ceremony

Sunday

A cheery "hello!" from the pontoon announced a visit from Ruth and Brian Magowan. For those readers who recall the Able Waister aka Stephen Gordon,  Ruth is his sister. She's here to support husband Brian and 2 sons Ben and Johnny, as they prepare for their crossing on board Truenorth. It was great to see them all and catch up as we joined the ARC opening ceremony this morning.

The ceremony involves a parade of all the sailors, grouped by country, carrying flags (think Olympics). 34 countries are represented here. Local Canarian brass and drumming bands led the procession around the dock. There's also a wonderful group of very warm, smiley St Lucians here at the invitation of the World Cruising Association,  generally greeting the crews, wishing us well and telling us about St Lucia. For the ceremony today they were resplendent in traditional dress.

James and Bea did great work this afternoon,  cataloging the dry stores we have on board, before we draft the provisions shopping list.

We're expecting Bridget and Sophia to turn up soon this evening after their flight from home. Then we will be 6, the full crew.

Joining the ARC

Arriving in Las Palmas marina yesterday afternoon, we were expertly nudged by the helpful marina man into a small gap between 2 large catamarans. Our pontoon is choc a block with yachts flying ARC flags and dressed overall with signalling flags. It's a carnival like atmosphere. Neighbouring boats are from Italy, Spain, Sweden, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands  Austria and New Zealand.

We were just in time for the ARC welcome party, a good chance to meet other sailors.

Today we have had our safety inspection,  dressed Tintin up, and started on the list of jobs for the week. James and Rob have been working hard on fixing the base plate for the water maker pump, with brilliant remote support from Steve Withers.

Back on board in Santa Cruz, Tenerife

We arrived back on board Tintin on Wednesday, with James and Bea Jackson. The rest of the Atlantic crew ( Bridget and Sophia Lewis) will be joining us tomorrow.

All is well on board. After a wet and squally start, we had a lovely breeze on the beam for the first part of the 50 mile crossing to Gran Canaria yesterday.

The dolphins came to play, but I missed the shot of the one that jumped a few metres into the air. What a thrill!