At sea, at night

It's half past midnight and we're just passing over 'Barracuda Bank', some fifteen miles from the island of Virgin Gorda. We meant to leave St Martin last night, in the early hours of the morning and sail overnight in order to arrive in the morning light. The small matter of May Day got in the way, as the French customs office only opened for two hours early in the morning of May 1st, and we missed it. So we waited an extra day to clear out of St Martin, which was no bad thing as we got to see more of some good friends we'd made in the past few weeks.

We eventually cleared out the next day and decided to set off after lunch. The forecast predicted light winds, perhaps as low as five knots, which would leave us motoring or going very slowly, so we were quite happy to leave mid afternoon and sail gently through the night.

Now, forecasts are very important. The most important thing to remember is that they are usually wrong. Which is why we have been romping along in a perfect fifteen knot breeze and are now under drastically reduced sail to try and slow down so that we don't have to hang around offshore for too long waiting for the dawn. It's a little odd to be wasting such good weather going slowly but no problem really.

Gesa is trying to sleep, but probably not succeeding after spending her 8-midnight shift watching a large number of ships and fishing boats, some of which were heading right for us and one needed us to turn on our bright lights before they altered course to avoid us. I didn't get a chance to sleep being kept busy checking radar and the lights of the other boats, so it'll be a long, coffee filled night for me.

Max was excited by the idea of sailing through the night, then crashed out at about eight and has been sleeping soundly ever since. Issie decided she was going to stay awake all night by reading lots of books so of course she was fast asleep by nine. At about half eleven she woke up, declared that she'd only just got to sleep and the big wave has woken her up. Within minutes she was asleep again. So tomorrow they will be well rested and we will be zombies. I predict an interesting day....

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