Thursday 8^th  December  2022

12^o 33.8 N  58^o 52.7 W

Today's Blog by David  (Time zone: UTC -3)

When you have spent 16 days at sea - exacerbated by the knowledge that you are tantalisingly close -  you can be forgiven for being impatient.

Impending landfall

We have 142 miles to go.  There is quite a lot of clag - reefs and stuff – around the Grenadines, as anyone who has been to Tobago Cays can attest.  Navigation lights are unreliable so we need to get there in daylight.   We need to average 6 knots to get there before dusk.  Hmmm.

The good news is that we have been sailing since 04.00; the bad news is that the winds are light, so our speed is 5-6.5kts  BUT  there is a 0.5kt current AGAINST us at the moment. It gets better – the wind is expected to reduce overnight so progress will be slower still!  So 6 knots is a bit of an ask …. unless we use the engine.  

But ……. Using the engine:

i)                 uses scarce fuel (we are really past the point of a detour to Barbados unless we call it a crisis)

ii)                Pollutes the atmosphere with noxious gasses

iii)               Pollutes our “Waaah” with unwelcome noise when we’d rather enjoy our last opportunity to hear the gentle rustle of the sea as Serendipity glides through/over it, pushing the phosphorescence gracefully aside.

So … don’t tell the crew .. but Donk it is going to have to be overnight ….  (unless this adverse current drops away).   

Crew Morale

Yesterday, I mentioned that he crew lacked  the customary excitement of an impending landfall, a state of torpor having descended among us.  Today, the only animated discussion I have heard has been speculation about when we might expect to get a telephone signal. And some spherical geometry to determine whether we will be able to “see” a 500metre high phone aerial on Barbados at 45 miles range.

These discussions are framed as an earnest desire to get me an electronic copy of a NHS Covid certificate so I can send it on to the authorities here.  But,  I suspect, deep down, it’s Twitter and Instagram that beckons. 

It’s the world in which we live…. L.  Hey ho!