Have had several very relaxing days on this passage, the weather has been very warm, 31c in the cabin, warmer when running the gen-set in the evenings while cooking dinner and running the water maker.
The DTW (“distance to waypoint”) North of Barbados is 693 miles. PredictWind has our arrival at the waypoint forecast for Friday night 22:00 UTC -3, so once we sail around the top of the island and down to Port St George, it will probably be around midnight Barbados time (UTC -4). The plan is to call the coast guard on the VHF and ask for permission to anchor outside of Port St George and dingy in on Saturday morning to clear customs and immigration.
Yesterday we flew the poled-out spinnaker all day and left it up overnight, but with a high wind speed alarm set for 17 knots. That went off at 05:00 am UTC-3, so we all got up, turned on the spreader and deck lights, doused the spinnaker, brought the pole forward and down to the bow, packed the spinnaker into its sail bag, swapped out the spinnaker sheet for the Genoa sheet in jaw of the pole, re-set the pole out on the Starboard side and went back to wing-in-wing. By the time we had done all that, the wind speed was back down to 12 kts, but we all tried to go back to sleep, 2/3rds of us unsuccessfully.
Today is Lena’s birthday and so to celebrate this afternoon we furled the sails away and cooled down hanging off the swim ladder at the transom. Nakee was still managing to do 2.5kts over ground with no canvas out, so holding on was key (we did trail a fender on a long line and Andy stayed on deck just in case). Now Lena is baking a chocolate cake and I’m going to cook a Sunday roast pork filet with roast potatoes, onions, roast carrots, gravy and green peas. All of the fresh veggies and fruit are virtually gone and I’m starting to fantasise about big, green, crisp leafy salads….
Playing Pink Floyd tracks on the stereo all afternoon while watching the sunset. Looking forward to being on anchor but will miss this passage when it’s over, which isn’t long now.
