Crew member on FRA145 Eärendil - Dec 4

Dear all,

Everything's fine on board! 

Yesterday afternoon was another of those fine sailing days with an averge wind of 22 knots coming more from East than in the morning, but it cannot be perfect all the time!

With the wind building up in the evening, we gybed and changed spnnakers from A6 to A5. In the not too perfect series of things, there is the fact that we lost another part of the electronics (but still have the essentials, ie the 2nd pilot and the position of the boat on the chart in our nav system). There is also the fact that we are having water in the back compartment of the boat - not a lot, but still in the range of 20 litres very 4 hours - and finally, we have to repair the rudder system from time to time. Apart from that, morale is high.

We gybed again early this morning with a good wind angle. We are on direct route for Grenada. Since yesterday, we have encoutered a lot of weeds, les sargasses. They are everywhere, a little bit more year after year, it seems!

We already had to make a backward manouver to free the keel of them. and we will have to do it again soon. It is easier to free the rudders of them. It is almost impossible to steer with these weeds. I suppose we will see more of them as we arrive closer to the Carribean Islands. Our ETA is now Dec 7 at 22pm UTC as per the nav system.

We are cuurently having more clouds and gusts with an average wind of 24 knots, but gusts up to 29 knots. We run with 2 reefs and the mainsail and have kept our little spi (the A5).

A demain, 
Pietro, Gery and Catherine.



Pure Grenada
Calero Marinas
Port Louis Marina