Well our adventure continues as we search for favourable winds that will take us to Grenada. We’re struggling to make the progress that we would like, which is frustrating. But I remind myself that compared to the 77 days 7 hours 37 minutes it took me to row across the Atlantic our current pace is super speedy. I came in last in that race too, and as I keep telling Chris, someone always has to come last.

To pass away the time yesterday we played ‘hangman’. After much initial confusion about the exact rules of the game and whether we were playing in English or Welsh we had quiet a giggle for about 5 minutes before deciding that it probably wasn’t the game for us after all.

To celebrate reaching the 500 mile mark we opened a chilled bottle of Spanish sparkling water. Lush it was too. And of course no major celebration would be complete without a bag of Haribo sweets. Yesterday we had the Frenzy Edition! Living on the edge that we are.

Send us all your speedy vibes, and I’ll get Chris to write tomorrow’s blog.

Elin & Chris

P.S FOR SALE six tins of Spanish meatballs – still in original packaging - open to offers.

We hear that all the other boats are now in! A huge congrats to all, I hope that you enjoy much deserved land celebrations – but please do save some rum for us!

Even accounting for boat size/ design/ crew size it’s fair to say that both of us are a little bit disappointed that we are last by sooo many miles. Having said that our objective for this race was always about just getting across, and getting the experience for future campaigns – which has been just perfect. We now expect to be in by the 17th and our prize will be getting in in time to party at prize giving night as Louay has promised that he’ll buy all the drinks!

Our other objective was to raise much needed awareness about our nominated charity, Findacure www.findacure.org.uk As mentioned before Findacure work to support patients with rare diseases, and to facilitate drug re-purposing as a way of discovering cures in an affordable way. There are nearly 7000 rare diseases, but currently there are only 103 drugs authorised to treat them in Europe, and only 37% of which are being reimbursed by all health care agencies. The approach used by Findacure therefore is instrumental to finding affordable treatments. This is my last plug for anyone that could possibly afford to sponsor to do so at (SORRY LOUAY / TISH PLEASE INSERT LINK IN FOR ME ONE MORE TIME).

Much thanks, truly appreciated

Elin & Chris

Sorry for no blog update yesterday, we were kidnapped by aliens and had to enter difficult negotiations for our release.

At the same time our comms stopped working, and took some time to re-set – thanks Roger.

D13 at sea was a challenging one for us with nothing quiet going right. As night came we got the twist in our A2, and dropped her for an A4. I think I’ve said before but helming in this pitch black where you can really see nothing is a nightmare. Soon after a squall came and we had to go for a quick drop. Sadly our drop line had dropped under the pole so wouldn’t work. We had to revert to using the lazy sheet to get her down, which was a mammoth effort. After that we decided to revert to just a conservative sail plan of just black sails over night. Not ideal, but allowed us both to get some good sleep in.

There’s so much seaweed in the ocean now that we must be getting close to land. Seen quiet a few other yachts, and had a chat with a couple.

Been pondering a lot on whether flying fish breath in and/or our of the water? Anyone know?

Other than that, all is going well. We’re both really struggling to cope with the heat – me in particular. Celtic blood was not designed for such climates, that’s for sure.

Off to do some needle work repair, which I’m sure will make my mother proud

Elin

Morning all

Well hopefully we have completed our last night at sea. We have been making good progress at veraging over 11 knots during the night. We had to put in a couple of gybes to pass to the north of Barbados and at first light we could see the island off the prot side. We currently have about 120 nm to run and are expecting to be in arround 0-2pm UTC. As we go over the line we change to local time on the boat and should be on the dock by 10pm local, in time foa a cold beer and a rum punch or two

Crew relaxing but we are pushing the boat quite hard so everyone needs to keep concentrating to the line

see you the other side

mike

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