Current position "21:41.8N 24:32.0W". Making steady progress with quite a variety of conditions, from spinnaker up last night to goose-winging (one sail either side of the mast) all at around 7-9 knots, but then also losing wind. Today Graham managed to sneak in a sun sight at 10:30 hrs, but since it has been all clouds. Overall we are taking a more southern route than some of the leading boats, but it’s clear we’re doing well on boat speed. Others to look for in leading positions in Cruising Class B are Chosen One, the leader in a Dufour 45 (a more racer version of our boat), and Carrot, identical to this boat. Both are slightly ahead – in both cases because they’re taking a shorter route, but in Chosen One’s case probably also because they can generate slightly more boat speed. It looks like we’re managing to sail Clearlake II slightly faster than Carrot so it will be very interesting how this combination of navigation/ weather choices and boat speed pan out.

 

We’re now in that position that we rarely see any other vessels, perhaps one sail per day, and then a few lights at night, but nothing close – so it’s just us. We had a good talk last night about what was working well/ less well. In general, most is in the former category, and spirits are good – so lunch was a four course meal of avocado with marie-rose sauce, followed by bacon and eggs, and then baked bread with brie, followed by a mixed fruit salad. But we also recognised we are doing too much on an informal basis, so with everyone willing there’s a tendency for people not to catch extra naps to catch up on  sleep lost at night-time while on watch. So each of us has probably been running on about 5 hours a day, which works fine for a while, but then everyone gets exhausted, especially as the spinnaker and its pole tend to take high levels of energy to put up and down as needed.

 

On the sailing front we’ve captured a couple of pics – first demonstrating the challenges of keeping a spinnaker up and in the right place when there’s no wind (like now), and second our solution to chafe – wrapping hose-pipe around a section of rope vulnerable to contact with another rope, or a guard-rail or similar. Here you see Chris positioning one as part of the spinnaker set-up.

 

Finally, to all you US folks out there – Happy Thanksgiving! We have our own turkey dinner prepared for cooking up this evening, with Byron in his element here. We can’t promise it will be as cooked in Houston, but not a bad spot to be eating at either!