Alpaire Day 7

We are now a week at sea on Alpaire. I am sure that you think that a lot of us have been at sea all our lives. We covered 150 miles noon to noon, (that is velocity made good to our destination VMG). Our actual distance through the water was more. We measure the distance to go to St Lucia to calculate VMG. Our actual through the water distance was more because we are sailing at an angle to the direct route in order to increase our speed. That angle depends on the wind direction.

This is fabulous sailing, the skies are mainly blue like the sea, winds are F3 to F4 from astern and the fish are flying. We had very few rain showers in the last 24 hours. Dress code is shorts and teeshirt. Sam had a saltwater shower using a special German shampoo (of the Wahoo and Yahoo family). Being the Sabbeth, Des allowed the rest of us a freshwater shower. Anybody contemplating the ARC should have a water maker and a generator. One of the boats on the SSB net reported that they made 60 litres of water. Alpaire's water maker makes that quantity in 20 minutes. Strange thing is that we can only hear the large boats close to us. Fingers crossed, pride comes before a fall.

We are at 36 degrees West. Every 15 degrees is one hour of time difference (360 degrees divided by 24 hours). I was curious as to the time of sunrise. I consulted the Pocket Universe App on my iPhone, 08:43 at UTC/GMT -2.

When it rose in the morning we noticed lots of sea birds. We were excited by the equation (birds = fish). They seemed to be taking one look at our lure and concluding that we were amateurs, no need to waste time, these guys are not going to catch anything. But we had a direct bite, probably a marlin or an orca. This morning our yellow squiddy bait, hook, spinner and everything had been taken. It could also have been a direct strike by a 10/10/20 bag! Des is still doing a technical analysis of the broken line. He wants to consult Sherlock Holmes when we get back.

All well on the good ship Alpaire, greetings to all.