What a night! Great sailing downwind in 15-18 tws all
the 50 miles to Nevis. No waves, therefore no surfs but steady 12-14.5 knots of
speed with few times just above 15. Igor did a great job on the helm although
conditions approaching Nevis were tricky with plenty of wind shift. No moon to
help us but nice stars and very mild weather. Nevis has a big mountain which
was capped at sunset and it was a nice picture.
We lost contact with Nefertiti, we wonder if we passed
her or not. What we know is that we were passed by the huge Athos and
Adela. Adela's crew did a gybe peel! Can you imagine? Masts were
lightened up like a Christmas tree. I wonder how many radios they have on board
to coordinate manouvers among crew members.
From Nevis to Saba we left St. Christopher on
starboard and we enjoyed the fantastic reaching with our A3, all away around
the little island. Then, just in time for my turn of rest we started beating
towards St. Barths.
Few tacks and 30 miles after (much less than 3 hours
later) we started the easy approach but incredibly tricky rounding of St.
Barths. Rocks, reef, no moon, many lights ashore, a buoy and a few other
difficulties. Francesco Mongelli, guided us through the difficulties like he
was playing with a 100 footer remote controlled model!
A2 was set up on starboard tack and once again we
started regularly seeing 14 and 15 on our log.
Asking to captain for a word, he smiled and commented
his swapping gennaker sheets after a gybe peel: “it was nice to hang again a
gennaker sheet on after few years”. We took pictures to prove how elegant he
was!!!
A2 was dropped smootly and we started again sailing up
wind to round St. Maarten to starboard, welcomed by a nice sunrise.
Stay tuned and track us from RORC Caribbean 600 Fleet Tracking!
No comments:
Post a Comment