Today we woke to a beautiful sunrise followed almost immediately by something much more important, Wind!!

So today we have been sailing on a beam to close reach at around 8-9.5 knots with occasional bursts into 10knots, this is much more like it! The whole yacht has become cooler with the engine switched off and has a much nicer motion.

We had the lines out again but had no luck until mid afternoon when I hooked something large on my rod. The clutch on the reel has been giving us problems over the last few days and this time in failed completely meaning Nick and I had to pull it in by hand. After a bit of a fight, we managed to land a medium sized Mahi Mahi. As we are still working away through the contents of the freezer she was put back.

Just before dinner, whilst Anna was on watch, a squall appeared on the Radar, it was getting larger and larger quite quickly and we realized there was no way of avoiding it. 15 minutes later I was on the helm in 25knots of breeze with Rob playing the mainsail and Nick on the headsail in the pouring rain. We were a bit over powered but managed to keep her on her toes and with a top speed of 11.4knots we sailed through to the other side to met with a big swell and no breeze! Thankfully it filled in again after dinner and we are now sitting at 9.0 knots. Hopefully this wind will keep up for a while as we have 850nm still to go.

Gordon