Challenger 2 is Sailing Again Under a Moon

 
After a second pitstop for repairs during which 5 of the crew left the ship as amongst other reasons time will be tight for getting into St Lucia for the 11th December, Challenger 2 is again back on track and heading for the Caribbean. Here’ is Skipper Ricky’s latest observations…

And so here we are off again. Left Cape Verde last night after another 24 hours in Mindelo to get new D1s but at least we had some great local food delicacies for lunch.

We left some crew members behind in Cape Verde and we will sorely miss them on our voyage.

11 persevering sailors left now on Challenger 2 with St. Lucia on our mind. Today is a beautiful (hot) today but with little wind…. maybe time for Spinnaker.

The new three watch system with a spinning in spinning out Mother is taking a bit of time to bed in. Joe woke up everyone and they dutifully came on deck and then he stayed on deck as well. Teething troubles.

The wind is lighter than forecast, then I realised I was working on an old forecast, from when we were here the last time.

So the light winds which are forecast are making sailing a too slow option at the moment. We will probably sail a bit at first light – pole out the headsail and saunter along at 5 knots. However I am very mindful of the fact that we need to keep up an 8 knot average to get into St Lucia before the rum runs out.

The good news is that the new forecast shows nice strong winds early next week and continuing.

All is happy on deck. The bright moon finally set at 0500 UT (0300 Boat Time), and a smorgasbord of glittering stars has revealed itself for our enjoyment and to steady our course. Having said that we had our first victim of a kamikaze flying fish.

Chris was attacked during a Yankee hoist. The fish was returned to the sea to tell his wild tales to the night he spent in a pit full of snakes.

Posted by: First Class Sailing