Leg 2 Cape Verde to St Lucia, 9 days at sea

We start to trust the consistency in the trade winds and keep full sails up, wing on wing, also during night. Making between 7 to 9,5 knots 24 hours have advanced our position with in the 75 boats ARC+ fleet to position 12! We are very satisfied with this.

We have not got any breakdowns and keep our fingers crosses. Some other boats have.

Our friends Susanne and Joachim on the Swedish Bavaria 46 named MoChara from Gothenburg, had an accident when their autopilot suddenly put itself in standby when both was below deck. They got back wind in the genua and the fixture on deck for the line keeping their spri-boom down broke and caused the spri-boom to break. So now they cant sail wing-on-wing and will probably lose some speed.

Yesterday was Thursday and its a Swedish tradition to eat pie soup and pancakes for lunch. We had no soup but pancakes, Nutella, strawberry jam and wiped cream on pressure tube. Nice!

Last night gave us alternating winds. On Saras watch 19-22 was lighter winds and we made 6-7 knots. During my (Mats) watch 22-01 more wind and we were surfing in the same wave in 9-9,5 knots for 5-10 minutes at the time. It was great. Same at Bjorn watch 01-04. During the morning when Louise hade the watch 04-07 came the squalls with rain. We had to take down all cushions in the cockpit and close all windows. We saw the squalls on the radar and manage to avoid them and had only calm winds. If you get trapped in a squall you can get 35-40 knots of wind with sudden wind direction shift. Not nice.

We now have 575 Nm to St Lucia but we cant aim the course right due as we already sail wing on wing with the wind from 150 degrees from starboard and risk to get backwind in our spri-out genua. Our course is 260 degrees but should be 270. The weather prognoses promise a wind shift tomorrow that would give us a better angle and enable us to have the course direct to St Lucia with the sails still wing on wing. Hope the wind shift comes tomorrow. We do not like to change our sail settings as we have advanced from 18th to 12th place the last days.

All well onboard Mon Ami

14 02 N 51 02 W, 575 Nm to go.