Log Day 3

Another great day’s downwind sail although much slower because we have no spinnaker halyard to hoist our Gennaker or Spinnaker. We have a considerable swell from the north east combining with waves of about 3 meter height making it a difficult, and in my view, too potentially dangerous a task to go up the mast to replace the spinnaker halyard. We will do this when we reach Panama.

We concentrated instead in fishing and cooking great meals. Our attached photo shows Marcel having energetically just brought a big fish to within 2 meters of the yacht when it did a giant leap and got away – fishy story if you ask me!

For our evening meal we had a variety of canapés as appetizers with a good white wine, followed by rice, bolognaise sauce and broccoli with a great red wine! The bolognaise sauce was actually made and frozen by my daughter, Sallyanne, for use during our Atlantic crossing with the ARC 2007. We toasted Sallyanne, and Rabbie Burns – it was Burns night and with a Scottish lady on board – very fitting and a good excuse for a wee dram!

The evening’s entertainment was rounded off with part 1 of “The Godfather”, during which, Lyne turned down the Bose sound system fully as, during a very noisy gun battle, she was worried that the yacht was under attack by Pirates!!! - not unheard of north of Venezuela!

This was written on the 26th Jan. during which there was a dramatic sea rescue attempt for four sailors who had to abandon a sinking boat. The boat was not a World ARC yacht but three World ARC Yachts were soon on the scene joined later by three more WARC yachts. Asolare was instrumental in monitoring and relaying vital position reports and identifying WARC yachts in a position to reach the search area before nightfall. We, unfortunately were too far away to render assistance. At the time of writing one sailor had been rescued and a search pattern was established for the other three.

More information on the World ARC web site. We pray that the three others are quickly found and rescued!

Capt. Peter.