Today we reached the halfway point on the 2250nm crossing from Mindelo, Cape Verde to Grenada in the Caribbean. It’s a glorious sunny day, we are in the trade-winds which are blowing steadily at about 20kts, we are flying along at 8 to 12 kts boat speed and for almost the first time we are able to head directly to the finish!

We started just over a week ago from Mindelo in moderate conditions. All 97 boats started at the same time so we were careful to find space and not get over focussed on the best start. After all it’s a ra..ra… (you know by now!).

Our plan was to avoid the wind shadow created by both islands and to head straight downwind for about 30 miles, so we hoisted our Parasailor for the first time, This is a strange spinnaker with a self-inflating wing built into the middle of the sail which makes it very stable. less likely to collapse and therefore easier to manage and less stress on the crew. We kept the Parasailor up until Saturday morning when we were past the worst of the lighter patches of wind then replaced it with the Code 65 gennaker and changed course to the West.

At this point the fleet had split into two camps, those who had headed more directly west and were therefore to the northern edge of the fleet (including our friends Rachel and Rob on Ægle) and those like us towards the southern side. The “leaderboard” on the ARC Plus fleet tracker would have shown the boats on the north ahead at this point as they had headed west first and were therefore closer to the finish…. they would have to head south later on so this wasn’t an issue for us even though we were showing as 68th at this point (and because it’s not a ra*e).

For the next three days we had fairly steady north easterly winds, we occasionally put a single reef in the mainsail and also moved the tack (bottom corner) of the code 65 sail over to the windward bow. This involved rigging another line on the bow cleat and a bit of a process to winch it over to the windward side (and back to the middle if we wanted to gybe) but it was worth it. This stopped the sail being blanketed by the mainsail, allowed us to alter course 10 degrees lower and therefore sail more directly downwind.

We were closely monitoring the weather forecasts as the normal tradewinds had not established and it was clear there were going to be some very big light patches of wind on the route. We decided fairly early on that we wanted to be below the 11th parallel (closer than 11 degrees North latitude) by the time we were halfway across as we expected this might avoid the light airs, and get into the tradewinds sooner, so we set all our routing calculations based around that point rather than Grenada. We watched boats sail a more northerly course but hoped that our bet (a very calculated one) would pay off later.

Once again we settled back into our watch systems. 3 hours for each of us starting at 1800 with supper then continuing on with the last watch starting at 0600 with sunrise.

Although the weather was much more kindly than the first leg we were still worried about chafe on the rigging, We knew the main halliard had some damage but hope that rotating it through 180 degrees would help avoid this getting any worse. Our daily checks also revealed some minor chafe on the lashing that holds the Code 65 to its cable and also some damage to the mainsheet where it was going through a cleat. We added an extra lashing for the Code 65 and decided to leave the mainsheet on the winches rather than cleat for the rest of the trip. Checking the halliard was harder, the binoculars were inconclusive so the only options was to risk the drone…. those of you who know me (RTI 2019 crew and Paul Brown from the Gib trip), will know my drone flying skills need some work. Suffice it to say we launched it, and at about the 8th attempt, landed it mainly by flying it directly into Adrian! We did get a few shots though they weren’t any more conclusive about the state of the halliard!

The Offbeat restaurant continues to produce fantastic dishes. We did have a slight banana phase as all of them ripened at the same time yet again. We thought we’d learned the lesson from the 2018 crossing so we’d bought bunches at different stages but no improvement. YouTube and Starlink on board providing extra recipe ideas!

We finally decided that the time had come to try our new fishing rig (recommendations courtesy of master big game fisherman Giles Padmore). No luck on Wednesday afternoon but after lunch on Thursday we tried again. A short while later the clicker whirred into action as did the team. I donned the Black Magic Equaliser (Google it!), Adrian wielded the new gaff (having practiced his landing technique after watching a YouTube video), Anne-Laure went for the vodka bottle (not for her) and the spike for calming and then dispatching the fish quickly. 10 minutes later after a short battle we landed our first catch. A 3-5kg, 95cm long Wahoo! We treated ourselves to a glass each of Petit Chablis to celebrate as we ate the ceviche followed by seared steaks, breaking our dry boat rule for one night.

On Wednesday we had spotted that the forecast suggested a couple of big windshifts to come. We are monitoring three different weather sources (the ECMWF, SPIRE and the Met Office models). Our PredictWind software allows us to assess different scenarios, looking at routes taking into account the boats speed at different angles and wind strength. Of course the forecasts are only forecasts and often differ so we have to use our judgement rather than slavishly following the suggestions. Not the least because we get as many different suggestions as forecasts!

We had placed our bet at midnight by gybing even further south as the wind shifted to the SE and then on Thursday evening just before tea we gybed back onto a Westerly course as the wind backed again to the NE. This was the move that we’d been looking for to catch the more northerly boats.

By last night, Friday it was clear that this had paid off. We had a better angle, better wind and sailed a shorter distance than most. This morning Saturday we had overtaken most of the group further north and were up to 13th boat overall (not that this is important as we aren’t ra*ing). As I write this we are about to cover 100nm for the last 12 hours and expect to do over 200nm for the day. The weather is fantastic and we are looking forward to the next week, hopefully straight to Grenada and a welcome rum punch. That being said it’s a long way to go…still 1000 miles but we are halfway to the Caribbean!