Last few miles

21:30UTC 05/12/07 17'04N 60'27W Wind ENE3

If you want to cheer up this crew, the recipe is simple. Turn off the engine and reveal the existence of a reserve wine supply. We did both last night, and the difference in crew morale is remarkable.

At dinner time, I revealed that, like an aircraft with reserve fuel tanks, we had a reserve of three bottles of wine. To resounding cheers, we opened the Wolf Blass Cab-Sauvignon and thoroughly enjoyed our dinner. A couple of hours later, Dad realised that we had enough breeze to sail so we cut the engine and unfurled the jib. The wind held through the night, and by daybreak we were only 120 miles from Antigua. We've been able to continue sailing during perhaps one of the best days of the trip so far, perfect wind, not rolling much, beautiful sunshine and the knowledge that we'll be in harbour tomorrow.

The forecast has the wind strengthening overnight, so we'll go a bit faster and probably arrive outside English Harbour at daybreak. We'll wait until the light is good before entering the anchorage, it would be a shame to hurry in during darkness and mess up our arrival after 2750 miles of travel!

This beautiful day, and being under sail, has made for a much happier crew, we have spent the day chatting, doing maintenance tasks, making lists for things to attend to once in harbour, and generally enjoying life. Tonight's cocktail, the 'Leading lights' refers to the lights that bring a ship home safe into harbour, and was expresso, evaporated milk, baileys and vodka.

There's a bottle of Beaujolais in the locker for tonight, and a small christmas pudding for dessert, it being December and we've not missed the Christmas hype one little bit, but perhaps we can allow ourselves a taste of the forthcoming season.

All's very well.

N

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