Picton Castle is underway again after a very successful festival at Aruba, and a wonderful few weeks cruising the Caribbean. Now we are bound for Lunenburg and the close of this sixth global circumnavigation. We pushed into fairly strong winds and biggish seas for 24 hours to get clear of Aruba, which is down-wind of almost everything, and at the noon change of the watch today set sail and shut down the main engine. Captain ordered a course change slightly to the west, asking the helmsman to fall off the wind a couple of points to allow us to sail and also making the seas much more comfortable as they moved astern of our beam. We’ll pass to the west of Haiti. And as if to celebrate a fantastic sailing day with plenty of sun and wind we caught a huge fish this morning too!
SHIPS WORK: Replaced lower topsail sheets and the starboard main upper topsail downhaul. Safety drills, pre-departure checklists and rig-check prior to getting underway yesterday. There’s too much weather to paint or varnish, so the watches are helping out with galley and making sure everything stays properly stowed in between sail handling.
BOUND FROM: Oranjestad, Aruba, Caribbean Sea
TOWARDS: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Canada
TIME ZONE: GMT -3
NOON POSITION: 15°14.6’N /071°13.7’W
DAYS RUN: 174nm
PASSAGE DISTANCE RUN: 174nm
DISTANCE REMAINING: 1,986nm
COURSE AND SPEED: North by West, Course made good 347° true, 6.5 knots
WIND: Wind Force 6, East by North
WEATHER: Fair, skies clear, barometer 1018 millibars and steady, visibility very good
SWELL HEIGHT & DIRECTION: South East 4 m
SAILS SET: All four topsails, foresail, main and fore topmast staysails and inner jib, all braced up on a starboard tack
Crew haul on lines to trim the fore braces