Day 9

Distance run in the last 24 hours: 149 nautical miles

Distance to destination: 1476 nautical miles

It is said that no two days are ever the same, but today closely resembles yesterday.  Over the previous night, we closed with a yacht several miles off to starboard, and passed him in the morning.  Last night we had a yacht several miles off the port quarter, and by morning he too had disappeared astern.  The sun is up again in a blue sky with a few similarly fluffy clouds, and the sea is a deeper shade of turquoise blue.  At 27C the temperature is a couple of degrees warmer. The wind still allows us to steer directly for our destination, but is slowly changing to a more easterly direction, and imperceptibly filling in, although for the moment it remains too light to give us much of a boost.  We have been motor sailing in order to maintain a respectable daily average, although we will be penalised for this on corrected time at the finish.
I think it was Giles Dealtry who reminded me that ocean sailing was 90% boredom and 10% fear, and the past couple of days have been monotonous.  We have been reading while waiting for the wind to arrive.  I'm almost through Anna Karenina on the Kindle, and we have enjoyed the distraction provided by occasional fleeting visits from shearwaters and petrels (no more dolphins or frigate birds, sadly).  In such light conditions meals, such as breakfast (below) have been relaxed affairs.

 

One of my current watches is the 'graveyard shift' of 02:00-04:00, but I am enjoying this slot. The sky provided a spectacular light show last night. The absence of light pollution here in mid Atlantic makes so many more stars visible to the naked eye, and our iPads make these easier to identify,  I counted over 20 shooting stars in 30 minutes, and if the skies remain clear we are expecting to observe a comet too over the next few nights.
The good news is that the wind is expected to strengthen tomorrow, and enable us to make faster progress towards St Lucia.