We are expecting our first yacht in tomorrow.  Miss Tippy has continued to head the fleet and hopes to be in sunny Antigua before nightfall.  A number of yachts who are joining the fleet in Antigua have also made an appearance.  Katrin and Steve, on Island Kea, are having some final repair touches done in Falmouth Harbour.  Scot Free, with Deborah and Eileen, is down in English Harbour and Aqualuna, with captain Jonathan aboard has arrived in Jolly Harbour.

Meanwhile, at sea, the fleet crawls its way across the last third of the Atlantic.  A number of requests for spares keep arriving via email.  But no-one has suffered as badly as Bali Blue, who are still struggling along under very reduced rig.  They need a few messages of good cheer to keep their morale up.

Fai Tira have found time to go swimming, with a mile or 2 of deep water beneath them.

Their good morale and the empathy with the natural surroundings has caused a breakout of poetry on board.  Here is their latest blog:

Fai Tira Getting Closer to Antigua . Monday 30th November  18:19.94N 52:18.75W

We are still heading West. The wind is so fickle we are sometimes sailing and sometimes motoring and sometimes a bit of both. The trade winds we are supposed to be experiencing are not as reliable as the weather forecast would indicate.  The wind seems to pick up in the evenings and overnight and then stay with us until about 2 o’clock in the afternoon when they die off.  At this time we put the engine on which gives us a chance to charge the batteries and all the electrical devices on board.  This seems to have developed into a pattern lasting for the last three days or so.  We have encountered a few squalls but nothing that has concerned us.

We are STILL at the front of the fleet of smaller boats but are being slowly caught up due to the fact we have light winds that don’t favour our 22 ton steel boat.  Whilst sailing we are primarily still goose winging. This seems to be the best combination for us although we do have the option of the cruising shute or the spinnaker. We might try one of these tomorrow if the wind stays light.  We are averaging 110 miles per day at the moment, this is in stark contrast to our best day of 165 miles.

Both wild and human life have remained in short supply, not even caught any fish.  We did stop the boat in the mid Atlantic yesterday and went for a swim.  On inspection of the hull of Fai Tira we did notice that we had already got a growth of barnacles which weren’t there in Lanzarote.  I suppose you could call this wild life.

We have settled down to observing two watches.  I am on watch from 9pm to 2 am.  The nights are getting spectacular with the moon nearly full the reflection on the water is beautiful and backed by an array of stars and planets not to mention the cloud formations it makes me burst out into poetry.

“The twilight hours like birds fly by,
As lightly and as free,
Ten thousand stars are in the sky,
Ten thousand on the sea,

“For every rippling, dancing wave,
That leaped upon the air,
Had caught a star in this embrace,
And held it trembling there.”

Welby.

Our ETA in Antigua is now Saturday morning. We have 550 miles to go to our goal and we are both looking forward to visiting the Caribbean as it will be our first visit to the area.  We understand Rum punch is the drink of the island so we will hopefully be sampling a few at the weekend.