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Atlantic Crossing

$ 100 instead of $ 1000 as we had requested. The problem was corrected,
and we could further receive the files.
On December 13th, the wind was still strong but with less gusts. We were
having fun with the ARC weather forecast announcing a rough sea
and enhanced trade winds: yes it was blowing hard! Indeed, the wind was
increasing and would remain on average around 25 knots until arrival. We
were making good progress now, almost 125 miles/day every day.
We were approaching And around 8h UTC, a the area where the dis-
masted mini was drift- ing, its beacon having
stopped four days ago big surge filled the we were no longer
knowing where it cockpit like a bathtub: could be, but we were
South of its last known position, and it was
drifting Southwest. So that we might have found it on our track, and per-
haps at night! I made several estimates of its possible positions, transferred
this into the plotter, and we decided to round all these points, what forced
us to go up a little bit to the North. This diversion cost us some time, but it
was more cautious.

At noon on the 16th, we were more than 400 miles from Rodney Bay, and
Lubilu III 30 miles ahead of us. At the end of the night the wind reached
almost 30 knots, we made peak speed at more than
Eating in a badly 7 knots. It would have be our best 24h, with 133
rolling sea miles covered. We took a dried meal even for
lunch. Before dark, we took out the third
reef. The morning of the 17th we had now less
than 300 miles to go, life reappeared on the water:
we met a LNG tanker heading North, probably com-
ing from Trinidad and Tobago. Sargassum plates
were more and more dense on the surface. We
caught a few pieces to observe them, and Christine
dried them.
On December 18th the wind was not weakening,
still these 30 knots “enhanced trade winds”. We
met an oil tanker heading for Brazil. The swell was

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