It feels good finally to know that we’ve turned west and that every mile we do now will be a mile closer to St Lucia. More light winds for the last 24hr period. We managed to resist the temptaion to engine through the night even though wind speeds were dropping to below 5 knots at times.

Things have picked up slightly so far today and we’re making much better progress under spinnaker and mizzen in 10-14 knots of wind. The last few days seems to have slowed the fleet down considerably and the crew are now thinking that onto our projected arrival will be a little later than first hoped.

A pretty alarming problem came to light last night: we seem to have misplaced 200 litres of water. One of our tanks doesn’t seem to be drawing. We know it was full when we left so we’re a bit mystified as to what the problem is exactly. Whatever it is, we are now going to be rationing pretty carefully for the rest of the crossing. Thankfully we bought about 100 litres of spare bottled water so the situation isn’t too drastic.

It seems the daily log wouldn’t be complete without the story of a fish or two getting away and, yes, we lost a yellowfin tuna yesterday as we tried to haul him onto the boat. It seems we’re destined to lose our wager, but the forfeit of hosting drinks on our boat doesn’t sound like too much of a punishment right now and I’m sure the invites will be going out by email before we even get in sight of St Lucia. We may not be able to catch fish but I’m sure we’ll still remember how to throw a party. After all, we have a reputation to uphold…

Until tomorrow, Makathea