Day 26

A sailing day of two halves. Last night was painful. Just a little breeze so we had the genoa poled out to prevent flapping and we ghosted along at just a couple of knots. But today was perfect. With the genoa stll poled out to starboard and the preventered main behind it we flew (for Petronella) along at 6 knots for hours on end. Blue skies, a 1m swell and a few puffy cumulus clouds - Trade wind sailing as it is described in the books though we were on a beam reach rather than downwind. Fantastic. Now the wind has dropped a bit but we are still moving well in winds that should have died by now. Fingers crossed we don't hit another flat spell before our arrival. Of course, all the day's action predictably came at the same time. As we hoisted the main sail, the dolphins arrived to give us another acrobatic show and then what's this - a ship. It changed course to come up our starboard side, glid past us at just a few hundred yards and then disappeared across our bows bound for who knows where.

Talking of arrival, we now have just over 350 miles left to go and we have started to get out the pilots and detailed charts for the Caribbean. Cripes, we're nearly there. Current arrival day is estimated for Tuesday but of course the wind will have the final say.

The big news though is that tomorrow is Marcus' birthday. Preparations have continued throughout the day. Out came the plain chocolate and digestives for the traditional Douch 'fridge' birthday cake (Marcus claims this is all he wants to eat tomorrow) and there have also been furtive rustlings suggestive of possible gifts for tomorrow.

Dinner was 'interesting'. Another helping of the never ending Spanish ham leg, baked beans and kidney beans, more mung beans, mayonnaise and rice. And very tasty it was too. We did find a bag of small potatoes we had forgotten about and a couple of very squashed tomatoes which were all consigned to the briney deep.

Right, time to send this off and hope for an optimistic weather forecast in return.

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