The journey through the Caribbean was rather unsteady. The wind was rather low and changed its direction often unpredictably. At least we couldn’t trust the forecast. Thus the race resembled a weather lottery. Nevertheless, the fleet stayed relatively speaking close together. Only after passing through the gab between Cuba and Haiti the fleet started to spread out a bit more.

We had three different gates to choose between in order to make our way northward. Two of the were to the west, one of them to the east of Great Inagua Island. While most boats decided to go for the eastern gate we followed the boats in the lead at that time and went west, passing through the most western gate. Following this there were two more gates, one each to the east and west of Mayaguana Island respectively. Most boats stayed true to their strategy and passed through the closest gate.

In that region we encountered lots of squalls as we expected. Especially after sunset lightning bolts kept flashing across the nightly sky for hours. Whenever we got closer to one of the squalls the wind picked up and often changed direction as well. Then we had to quickly reef the mainsail to make the most out of the wind and be not just laid flat on our side. But as suddenly as the wind had appeared it vanished again after just a couple of minutes. To prevent damage to the electronics we would usually unplug the connection cable for the wind instruments, which are installed at the top of the mast. Thus we had to gauge the direction and strength of the wind based on the hawk and the behaviour of the sails. While this seems a bit intimidating at first, it usually works pretty well.

With passing the second line of gates we also left the Caribbean behind. We are back in the North Atlantic. With that we had fewer squalls. Unfortunately, we however also had less wind. Thus the progress was initially not very fast. Only when the wind picked up a bit the boat would accelerate and we were able to put some miles behind us. Yesterday morning we the had two waterspouts developing directly next to us. We took our chances and aimed for the middle. Although the wind got up considerably for a moment, we were able to avoid both waterspouts. But also that wind was not meant to stay for long. There were no more than 20 minutes between reefing the main sail and shaking out the reef again. Since the wind has dropped significantly. Unfortunately just after we started the Ocean Sprint. The only relief is that all the boats are going through the same. But this might also mean that winning the Ocean Sprint might be a question of luck as to where the wind starts to fill in first. After the sprint it is only a few hundred miles to the finish. From there we are looking at a 30 hour motor through Chesapeak Bay and up Potomac River to Washington DC. At the moment it however looks as though this might take another couple of days. Let’s see what the weather has in store for us.