Askari Position 19th November 2018 - 1200 local (UTC 1700)

29 degrees 22 minutes north, 69 degrees 51 minutes west
Sailing on a course of 160 degrees magnetic towards the BVIs
Wind East 10-15 knots
Speed over the ground 7 knots

Happy Wedding Anniversary to us! Yay we actually remembered for once…. To celebrate we are back in bathers, Andrew had a shave and I have even washed my hair.

The wind eased off over night and we had a great calm sail from about 10pm onwards. It's amazing that we have still only run the engine for an hour on this whole trip.

Hair wash day

This morning the wind has come around more to the East (from north east) and we've followed it on a more southerly course. We have unusual wind on this passage, which we expected to be using fuel to get east. An upper level trough has sat just below our course for the last 3 days creating the north easterly winds we've ha,d in the region of 10-22 knots. Later today we expect to cross it, pick up some squally weather and then get light-ish south to south westerly winds on the other side. Right now it's gloriously warm, we are fishing and have both Escapade of Rame (Oyster 485) and Sea Larks (Catamaran) on our AIS. It's funny as we have been within 20 miles of Escapade since we left - I know for a fact that neither Andrew or Richard would be following each other however they definitely appear to follow the same philosophy and the boats both enjoy sailing into the wind, even in some of the seas we had yesterday.

Passing ship.....

On our radio net last night, there were a few reports of sea-sick crew, kids and dog- hopefully everyone had the same lovely conditions we had last night and will be a bit more cheerful tonight. I actually don't mind being on the wind as you can get wedged in and plan to do things carefully knowing the boat will stay on one side - yesterday with big square waves was a little more lively certainly though…..

We've been reading, listening to podcasts and sleeping mainly, I have also learned how to get the weather in on the SSB, something I've been meaning to learn for the last 2 and a half years. Andrew went out for deck inspection this morning and all was good, just a couple of spare halyards to tighten up.

So all is very well and we are having a lovely day.

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