Dave and Jacquie arrived aboard Dignity last night to say goodbye just as I was sending yesterday evenings blog. One reason to come aboard was to see how email over SSB works so they know what to look for as they try to make theirs work. They brought wine, beer and nibbles as a thank you for taking them out diving a couple of times. Normally we don’t like to drink the night before a long sail but how could we refuse?
As planned we left Bonaire at 6am this morning. We set off on a port tack with main and jib to assess wind speed and direction away from the island. We soon concluded it was coming from the ESE and around 12 knots, less than the 15-20 knots forecast. So out came the Code Zero and we had it up and the main/jib down just west of Klein Bonaire.
Since then we’ve made reasonably good progress albeit with the winds slightly lower than we’d hoped. We’re currently 12nm north of Curacao. It’s quite misty so we’re not getting a great deal out of the solar panels but the regen is covering everything and some.
We’ve decided on a 3 hour shift system :
8-11: Helen
11-2: Steve
2-5: Helen
5-8: Steve
and then repeated. We’ll see how this goes.
Shortly after our last change Helen decided to go down below to get some sleep. I called her back straight away as we had a fish on the port line. Unfortunately it escaped before we hauled it in. It was not the same as any fish we’d caught before. Strong hints of yellow and blue. Perhaps it was a mahi mahi or a yellow fin tuna. I was already imagining this evenings dinner before it got away. Next time.
The wind has moved a little more to the south pushing our course a little more northerly unless we want to jibe the Code Zero (which we don’t). This is along the lines of our plans anyway to get into the stronger winds between 12N and 13N. It remains to be seen what we’ll do overnight.
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At 11/13/2009 15:53 (utc) our position was 12°20.20’N 068°47.33’W
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