18th November 2005 (Las Palmas, Gran Canaria to Port St Charles, Barbados 0nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

We'd finished shopping, emails, fixing stuff (see the Canary Islands diary for the rest of today) and the anchor is up. We have only 40 minutes to fuel up before they close tonightr, so they weren;t too hapy as we motored into the marina and wanted a full tank of diesel, plus filling the 4 * 22 litre cans we had bought, plus full water and spare water containers etc! They kept hinting they were closed, and we kept filling things up until we had finished! I even had a shower, whilst we were at the fuel dock, just so we would have full water tanks and I would smell better! We then went and paid, and eventually left the fuel dock at about 20:15.

I had planned to motor out of the marina past the ARC boats with Caribbean music blasting out, but I couldn't find the CD, so we left in peace! Once out of the marina, sails up, but no wind, so we motored for the next 22 hours! We had to motor anyway as we had filled the freezer with all the meat and it was critical we ran the freezer at the maximum for a couple of days until the meet was frozen solid and we could turn the freezer down a bit.

We had a few drinks and celebrated the start of the journey, agreed the watches for tonight and set off in an easy relaxed way. Floris left me some work to do during my night watch, before he went to bed. He had bought a data cable for his Garmin GPS and needed a lead soldered up to connect a serial cable to the Garnin lead. This would allow us to plug his Garmin into a lighter socket (saving batteries) and also to connect it up to the autopilot to steer the boat. I read the manuals for the wiring diagrams, made up the lead, disconnected my GPS chartplotter and plugged in the Garmin. It worked first time and we had all the GPS functions we would need working from Floris' GPS. I then tried my Garmin Streetpilot on the lead and this also worked perfectly. Whilst finding the wiring diagrams, I also found the instructions on how to access the factory menu on my B&G Chartplotter. This allowed me to perform a factory reset on the chartplotter, which fixed it instantly, so we now had 1 GPS Chartplotter built in, 2 handheld GPS' which we could wire up in less than 5 minutes, plus Graham's handheld GPS also! As long as the American's didn't start a war and turn off the satellites, we should know where we were even without using the sextant!

19th November 2005 (95nm travelled 2705nm to go!)

First day at sea, we can still see land in the morning, but at least we've set off. There's almost no wind and we need the freezer to really deep freeze the meat, so we motored until 10am.

We were still getting into the routine of being at sea, Floris and Natalie still had things to learn about the boat, but generally good spirits as we had finally started our journey. We saw a few boats in the distance, but otherwise nothing much happened all day!

We also changed the time to GMT-1 as we were at 15° West. The Canaries should also be GMT-1 but they were the same as GMT for some reason! It had confused us when we arrived in the Canaries, but we were determined to arrive in Barbados with the right time! Every 15° West of the Greenwich Meridian should be another hour back, hence Barbados at 60° West should be GMT-4.

At 17:50 we decided to bring in the fishing lines and on the Port line we had our first fish! It was some breed of eel, about 2 foot long and big enough to be cooked, so in it came, introduced its head to "Mr Hammer", then gutted, cleaned, bagged and into the freezer!

20th November 2005 (212nm travelled 2588nm to go!)

Another quiet day, following a quiet night. The only interesting thing today, was another fish! We reeled this one in and it looked like it had swallowed the ocean as it ballooned out and was full of water! We brought it in, introduced "Mr Hammer" then I started to gut it, but this one was different! As I was slicing it, the skin was just peeling back as though it wasn't attached to the fish! I was able to skin the fish with my fingers, so cleaned, bagged and in the freezer with the eel.

21st November 2005 (309nm travelled 2491nm to go!)

There was no wind at all, from 6am to midnight on the 22nd we had less than 5 knots of wind and what there was, came from the south west, the direction we wanted to go! Only option was to run engines, one at a time and motor for 2 days! At 12:30 we caught our first Dorado of the trip, usual story, meet Mr Hammer, gutted, cleaned, bagged and in the freezer!

At 14:00 we decided that we were bored, so engine off, drift under sail and time to go swimming! We were 250nm from land and just diving off the bows and going swimming. The only rule we had, was one person remain on the boat at all times, just in case a gust of wind came up!

We'd just come back from swimming and were underway by motor again, when we spotted a turtle in the water.We only just missed it as it dived under our bow and swum out behind the boat. 10 minutes later and we had dolphins, they always bring a smile to the crew and this time I was determined to swim with them! It wasn't that easy as we were motoring at 4 knots, if we slowed down, they would probably leave us, so we dropped the anchor bridle over the bows and I dove in and grabbed the rope. I just hung there, being dragged along by the boat with dolphins diving under the bows ony 4 feet away. Not quite swimming with them, but as close as I could get! After they left I climbed back onboard and dried off. One more turtle that afternoon, then nothing much else all day!

We decided to name today "Turtle Day"

22nd November 2005 (412nm travelled 2388nm to go!)

Another nothing happened day, we slept, sunbathed, read books and motored all day! The only exception was a swimming break at 15:20, and we didn't even catch any fish!

23rd November 2005 (518nm travelled 2282nm to go!)

We actually turned the engines off at midnight last night, there still wasn't much wind, but we had to try and sail some of the way! by 4am it had picked up to 9 knots of wind, not much, but at least we were sailing. We started to think that Barbados was a long way away!

At 11:30 we noticed a seam coming apart on the mainsail, so dropped the main and I sat on the deck with Floris for an hour as we restitched it by hand.

At 14:20 the fishing rod bent nearly double, we had a big Dorado on the line and reeeld it in. Floris reeled in the hand line and had another Dorado, but as we were landing the first one, his escaped!

At 23:00 the wind had escalated to 28 knots so we decided to put a reef in for the night shifts, but by 3am thw wind had dropped, so the reef came out again!

24th November 2005 (615nm travelled 2185nm to go!)

7:15, Floris had only put out the fishing lines half hour earlier, but he had another fish! This time, he reeled it in and landed it, another fine Dorado into the freezer! We had been eating the fish, but we were now getting confident of living on fresh fish if we needed to!

There was another catamaran near us all morning, and as he closed in we had a chat over the VHF. It was one of the ARC boats, ARC101 with Bill the skipper being really friendly. He recommended a curry house in Rodney Bay, St Lucia called Razmatazz so I guess I'll have to go there and try a Caribbean curry!

At 14:00 we caught 2 more Dorado's, the freezer was getting full, so the meals were being rearranged to add fish every 3 days or so!

Our only concern now was diesel, we had used a lot more than planned already and still had a long way to go. We checked the tanks and we were down to about 90 litres in the main tanks, plus 40 litres in the spare cans. We had already filled the main tanks with an extra 40 litres from cans, yet we were only a week out. Listening in on the SSB frequencies for the ARC, a lot of their boats were heading for the Cape Verde Islands as they had all used more fuel than planned in the first few days. We decided to keep going straight for Barbados, but to monitor the fuel over the next couple of days and detour to Cape Verdes only if we really needed to!

25th November 2005 (737nm travelled 2063nm to go!)

13:00 2 more Dorado's, both in the freezer within 10 minutes, we had the gutting process well sorted by now!

16:00 another Dorado, this one was huge, Floris reeled it in and posed for photos! This was fish 11 so far and we were only 7 days out!

26th November 2005 (886nm travelled 1914nm to go!)

It was 7am, I had joined Patty on her morning watch and we had raised the 35m Genoa on the spinnaker halyard, when suddenly it blew out and went round the shrouds! We dragged it down and looked at the problem, .the big stainless clip holding the tack onto the front of the boat had snapped! Quick repair (tie it on with rope) and she was back up and flying again 10 minutes later!

During the time on deck, we also found our first flying fish, they had landed on deck in the night and were lying their just waiting to be collected! The only problem with the flying fish was their size! They were like sardines and just didn't seem worth it as we had so much Dorado!

At 8am as the sun came up we could just see a big 3 masted schooner about 1 mile off to port. We spent the whole day sailing with them, almost matching each other for speed, probably the strangest race we would compete in!

10am and another fish on the line, this time it was our first Tuna! not huge, but enough to make good tuna steaks for everyone at lunchtime!

Nothing else happened all day, just the schooner which we had now nicknamed the pirate ship, still in sight in the distance!

27th November 2005 (1033nm travelled 1767nm to go!)

At 2am we suddenly received VHF contact from the Pirates! Their boat was the Stat Amsterdam, so even though they hailed us in English, Floris who happened to be up at the time, spoke back to them in Dutch! They had a chat for 10 minutes, wished each other a pleasant voyage and sailed off into the night! We kept out a watch for them next day, but didn't see the Dutch pirates again for the rest of the trip.

09:10 Another Dorado!

11:20 2 more Dorado's!

12:55 Another Dorado!

13:31 Another Dorado!

13:45 Another Dorado!

14:15 Another Dorado!

We officially named this day "Dorado Day" with a total of 7 today and 19 in 9 days. The freezer was now full, so the girls banned us from fishing until we had eaten all the fish in the freezer!

28th November 2005 (1136nm travelled 1664nm to go!)

We weren't allowed to fish, so no Dorado today, just reading, sleeping and sunbathing all day!

29th November 2005 (1247nm travelled 1553nm to go!)

We weren't allowed to fish, so no Dorado today, just reading, sleeping and sunbathing all day!

30th November 2005 (1390nm travelled 1410nm to go!)

We weren't allowed to fish, so no Dorado today, just reading, sleeping and sunbathing all day! We saw ARC 182 flying their spinnaker, but they were too busy sailing to talk to us on the VHF!

1st December 2005 (1528nm travelled 1272nm to go!)

06:30, Graham had just gone down after we had hoisted the 35m genoa when suddenly it dropped and went uder the bows! I shouted to him, then went forward to pull the sail back onto the boat. This time, the wipping had failed on the halyard, the stainless clip was on the sail but the halyard was still up the mast. By the time we had tidied up the sails, the halyard had dropped inside the mast! The only way we'd be using that again was a trip up in the bosuns chair to drop the halyard back through again.

10:20 1452nm sailed, 1452nm to go! We are officially half way! It has taken us a lot longer than expected and cost us a lot of diesel, due to the light winds at the start. If we carry on at this average all the way, we won;t arrive until about 15th December, nearly a week longer than I'd planned. We just had to hope the trade winds started to kick in and we had some decent wind behind us for a change!

Floris was cooking lunch, when the gas ran out! No problem, we had brought 4 bottles, 3 full, one half, but we were now onto the third bottle!

During lunch, we debated the halyard, Patty volunteered to go up in the chair, as long as she didn;t have to do anything technical! We warned her that it could mean some bruising and Graham insisted on going up instead of her! I was gratefull for his offer, as having been up the mast many times, I really didn't fancy doing it whilst swaying with the waves! We had to drill out 4 rivets and remove a plate to get the halyard out, and having done this we found Graham's saviour! The halyard had frayed again where it went over the pulley in the mast and even if we dropped it in again, it would only last so long! We decided it wasn't worth the hassle and we would drop the 25m jib and hoist the 35m genoa on the roller furling instead.

2nd December 2005 (1632nm travelled 1168nm to go!)

We still weren't allowed to fish, so no Dorado today, we didn't see any other boats, just reading, sleeping and sunbathing all day!

3rd December 2005 (1739nm travelled 1061nm to go!)

Just after midnight we had a guest join us for the trip! A bird had flown in and was clearly tired, so stayed in the cockpit all night (except for when Floris was on watch, when he brought him into the saloon, where he did what birds are trained to do on the cushions!) We named him "Birdie" as we were really imaginative, but Floris wanted to call him "Blackfoot" so he became "Birdie Blackfoot". He stayed with us for most of the day, eventually flying off at about 19:00.

At 12:35 we had our first encounter with a whale. It swam past the boat going in the opposite direction, missing us by less than 10 feet! We had heard reports of "Blasé" one of the ARC boats being hit by a whale, which got caught under the hull! It had swum away, but was bleeding when it left them! Our encounter was definitely more friendly as it just swam past blowing air!

4th December 2005 (1856nm travelled 944nm to go!)

Floris was out watching the waves, when he saw a huge Dorado swimming in the waves just off the boat. I ignored the "No fishing" rule and grabbed the rod. I had only just let the lure into the water, when he spotted it, swam over and bit instantly! This fish was BIG! He pulled the line out through the reel so quickly, I was struggling to hold it! I was concntrating on stopping the line from paying out, as he was jumping wildly from the sea! Then it was too late, and I lost him! This was definitely the one that got away as it would have been twice the size of our biggest catch yet!

5th December 2005 (2001nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

Another day, more reading and sunbathing etc.

15:25 we were hailed on the VHF by "Contesta 2" A french boat heading to St. Martin. We had a brief chat, they had set off from Gran Canaria before us, but spent a couple of days in the Cape Verdes before heading across.

6th December 2005 (2180 nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

Another quiet day, the winds started picking up and we're making better progress. Cruising at 7-8 knots always makes you feel better!

During the night we'd had another visitor! Because we had 2 Dutch onboard SinterKlaus and Black Pete had visited us and brought presents! Apparently in Holland, he arrives on a boat, with lots of "Black Pete's" as helpers instead of the Elves we are used to! He left a poem and presents for all the crew! It's good having different nationalities onboard, more reasons to celebrate!!

We set the clock back again as we passed 45° West, so we were now at GMT-3

At 13:10 we hailed another yacht on the VHF, even though they were less than 1nm from us, no answer, so I guess they weren't listening! We changed from running to a Broad Reach and managed to pull away from them at reasonable speed. If they didn't want to talk to us, we would leave them behind!

At 20:00 I tried to start the generator, but no response, as it was dark and blowing 20+ knots, I decided not the best time to go onto the rear steps. The batteries wouldn't last the night on autopilot, so we agreed to hand steer most of the night during ouyr watches.

7th December 2005 (nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

I got up early, partly due to the time change yesterday, it didn't seem like 6am! I had a quick look at the generator and decided it was better to just start it than fix the problem now! Graham warmed the glow plugs and I shorted the starter solenoid and she burst into life! Problem not solved, but we had a workaround to charge the batteries and run the freezer for a few hours! If the sea calms down later I'll take another look!

10:50 and we were joined by about 20 dolphins. They gave a full show, backflips, diving under the bow, racing through the waves. They stayed with us for 30 minutes, just showing off all their tricks, probably the best show so far!

I checked the generator contacts but all is now fine again. It is starting on the buttons, so leave it alone until the next time!

8th December 2005 (nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

We'd had a good night, averaging 8 knots all night, so we were really making progress. We spent the night checking the log to see how many miles we'd covered in the previous 24hrs and at 04:00 we made it 200 nautical miles in 24 hrs. A record for the Blue Dolphin since I've owned her!

At 10:00 we hit the record with 205nm in 24 hrs, we had averaged 9.5 knots for the past 2 hours and decided that this was enough, so time to put in a reef.

15:00 we caught our biggest fish yet. Another Dorado, but this one was 3 feet long and at least 20lb. Natalie had lost a game of cards yesterday and her forfeit was to gut the next fish we caught! The photos are on the How we did it page! Caught by Graham, gutted by Natalie, filleted by Floris, cooked by Patty, eaten by Steve (and the others!)

9th December 2005 (nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

The only thing that happened today was a chat with ARC 185, a yacht called "Larosse" with the skipper Paul saying they'd had a good crossing, a few minor problems, but their biggest problem was that they had 2 crew with flights home booked from St Lucia for 11th. They were still 400nm away and had 36 hours to get there. Their fastest day was 180nm so they had no chance!

10th December 2005 (nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

At 12:00 we set the time back another hour! We are approaching Barbados, which is at 57° West, so we're sure it will be GMT-4hrs.

We took the reef out and went back to full sail for the last day!

11th December 2005 (nm travelled 2800nm to go!)

We're there!!!!! Well not quite yet, but we awoke to the sight of land! Natalie had spotted the glow of lights at about 3am and Barbados gradually became clearer through the morning. I woke up at 6am and had a look out, it was certainly there and getting closer all the time! We were going well at about 7-8 knots and should arrive in Port St Charles about 12:00 today!