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I'm on watch from 8 till midnight tonight so will hand over to Niall next year. It's been an great few days out here in the tropical Atlantic. I'm sitting behind Tin Tin's wheel in shorts, tee shirt and life jacket. We are rocking along on a heading of 290 Deg on relatively calm sea at 7-8 knts with 25-30 knts of wind over our starboard quarter. We have a reefed mainsail for the night allowing one person to handle most eventualities by reefing the Genoa using the roller system. There is no moon so the stars are particularly bright when they appear from behind the low clouds. I don't think I reported our three whale day in the blog, so better relate a most extraordinary day. It began when w hale was spotted following us in the waves behind us. They surf the waves just below the surface so that when the sun is at the right angle you get a great view of them, gliding along at 7- 8 knts, apparently effortlessly. Then we spotted a second and soon afterwards a third....

Hope you have all had an enjoyable Christmas with friends and family. We celebrated with a large chicken and mushroom pie (In the freezer since Tenerife!) and Cape Verdian potatoes and carrots, washed down with some bubbly. Santa hats were worn, presents opened and even 4 small stockings had made their way on board and we're hanging above the companionway, not forgetting the Christmas tree (see photo posted previously). All in all a memorable day! It is now dark, windy and wet outside at the end of Day Nine.... Niall is on watch, Kyle in his bunk, Paul editing video in the saloon while I write. Today has been an amazing day of whale watching and filming. We have seen a Minke whale the last 2 or 3 days, following us then accelerating past us so it wasn't too much of a surprise when we spotted another one surfing the swell just behind us. What was a surprise was to se a second and then a third! Cameras, iPhones and GoPro were deployed in a major photographic operation... th...

A whale of a day! Today is our 7th day of sailing since leaving Mindelo on the 20th Dec. Today Kyle & Niall have been taking video of the boat.. from underwater as we speed along at 7knts, with Paul's GoPro, resulting in some amazing footage of Tin Tin's underside and waves. Niall also stuck his head under for the thrill! Soon afterwards they were watching the footage below and I was contemplating how to land a drone on the Bimini.. when a 7-8m long whale popped out of a wave right beside us and zoomed past our bow leaving me shouting WHALE! repeatedly causing a sudden dash up the companionway by the others... but sadly this whale was on a mission which didn't include engaging us in conversation!

After reaching Mindelo and finding our way into and anchorage on the evening of the 16th Dec, Paul and I awoke on the 17th to find a wreck lying about 100m behind us only marked with 3 black balls and completely unlit at night. Although this was a surprise it is actually marked on the charts so we should have known it was there! After a relaxed breakfast we got the tender off its dayIt's and motored around the marina looking for a berth that would be relatively easy to get into and out of in the prevailing 30knt winds. Having found one we headed for the marina office to register and arrange for assistance in mooring stern on. As we were in the office, Anne and Niall arrived hot foot from the airport after flying in from Sal. With four aboard we got lines out and attached, then made our way to our berth and moored up with no problems, two line from the bow to mooring bouys, and then slipping back to the pontoon so the stern lines could be attached. This was a much more successful...

Lat+17deg14'1" Lon-29deg38'34" Alt+019ft GPS Sats seen: 06 2016-12-22 05:53UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=17.233717&lon=-29.643043 Sent via Iridium GO!

I'm sitting in the Floating bar in Mindelo Marina with Paul, Kyle and Niall (who you will beer to hand and computers consuming most of Cape Verde's internet bandwidth!  I have to apologise for he lack of posts (and the series of position reports which are probably a little annoying?)I will stop sending them to the blog for the Atlantic crossing. Talking of the Atlantic crossing, there has been a lot of activity over the last two days topping up the stores so we can feed four hungry young men... well two really young men and two slightly older men... Great quantities of oranges, apples, potatoes, beer... Hang on, BEER? I thought this was to be a dry voyage!  Well, there is a lot of tonic aboard, coke (full fat version thank goodness!) and still a good supply of Sainsbury's ginger beer left over from our original stores.  Of course, I've jumped ahead of myself.. So I ought to take you back to where I left off in my last blog entry which I posted the night of our arrival i...

https://goo.gl/photos/QcQmstgcCRQwaBkXA Copy the link and put it in your search engine and you should be taken to the online album.... Sorry but I am struggling to make a clickable link when using my iPad to edit the blog!

Lat+16deg53'0" Lon-24deg59'42" Alt000ft GPS Sats seen: 06 2016-12-17 09:57UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=16.883358&lon=-24.995040 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+16deg38'7" Lon-24deg28'24" Alt+009ft GPS Sats seen: 07 2016-12-16 14:41UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=16.635375&lon=-24.473380 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+16deg34'12" Lon-24deg21'38" Alt+340ft GPS Sats seen: 06 2016-12-16 11:08UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=16.570052&lon=-24.360788 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+16deg28'31" Lon-24deg13'28" Alt000ft GPS Sats seen: 04 2016-12-16 03:39UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=16.475418&lon=-24.224588 Sent via Iridium GO!

We have completed the voyage from Tenerife to Cape Verde! 880 miles in 192 hours, mostly on a port tack. We dropped anchor in the harbour of Palmiera, on the island of Sal, where we found 20-30 other yachts at anchor. We made our way through a few and anchored closer to the shore than most... The anchor bit hard on something so we feel secure for the night. It's always a bit of a wary dropping anchor into unknown ground, so we attached a small pick up buoy to the anchor to assist in retrieving it if it has got snagged. It has been an interesting voyage, nothing broken, no close shaves, just one liner which passed within half a mile, a strange blue green light bobbing along in the dead of night, fairly regular visits by Atlantic spotted Dolphins, and in the last two days lots of flying fish. Bird life has been extremely sparse, a swallow, some shearwaters, or fulmars? too far off to see if they had yellow or red legs.... A couple of turtles seemingly just hanging around then...

Lat+17deg6'47" Lon-22deg44'44" Alt000ft GPS Sats seen: 04 2016-12-13 18:18UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=17.113142&lon=-22.745805 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+17deg34'1" Lon-21deg38'47" Alt+007ft GPS Sats seen: 08 2016-12-13 07:46UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=17.567198&lon=-21.646447 Sent via Iridium GO!

It's been a sunny warm day with a constant wind of 20-25 knts blowing us parallel to the African coast. It's a shame we didn't decide to get within sight so we could claim Africa this year rather than next. Cape Verde is technically part of Africa apparently but that's like saying that Jersey is part of Great Britain. We have had some stronger winds during the first night and occasionally during the day. We are on a port tack broad reach with the wind on our port quarter. There are about three different swell patterns, the biggest coming down from west north west with a 10 second interval and 1.5 - 2.5 m in height, then there is the swell due to the wind which, considering we are 140 miles off the coast, I thought would be bigger than 1 - 1.5 m then there is a third swell which is much harder to determine but is there and occasionally makes itself known which a slap against Tin Tin's side. We settled into a 3 hr watch system very easily. With 3 crew this mea...

Lat+22deg4'2" Lon-19deg34'25" Alt000ft GPS Sats seen: 07 2016-12-11 08:50UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=22.067312&lon=-19.573642 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+24deg5'27" Lon-18deg28'44" Alt+005ft GPS Sats seen: 10 2016-12-10 12:28UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=24.091073&lon=-18.479007 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+26deg46'14" Lon-16deg56'45" Alt+141ft GPS Sats seen: 08 2016-12-09 09:50UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=26.770665&lon=-16.945908 Sent via Iridium GO!

Lat+27deg51'8" Lon-16deg14'55" Alt000ft GPS Sats seen: 04 2016-12-08 21:18UTC http://map.iridium.com/m?lat=27.852438&lon=-16.248867 Sent via Iridium GO!

On the 1st Dec 2016 Paul drove Stewart and me through the the frozen (-7 degC) Sussex countryside at an unearthly hour so we could catch EasyJet flight to sunny Tenerife. Stewart is the second deck hand to join the voyage. Paul remains behind to complete the second part of Medical Emergencies at Sea course. This will allow him to source lots of exciting equipment and controlled drugs anywhere round the world as well as giving him practice in sewing (up of wounds...), giving intra muscular and intravenous injections, and insert catheters... let's home that the worst we have to deal with is nothing more serious than a mild case of sunburn and an insect bite! It's been a busy time back in the UK. I spent a week at home catching up with my boys, William & Elizabeth and mother and Ioan. Paul, Anne and I celebrated mother's 85 the birthday a bit early as we had to start part 1 of the Medical course. This 4 day course prepared us for assessing medical emergencies from unexp...