Holy Survivor Batman, we are almost there and the tribe has spoken there will be no immunity granted.

Another lovely trade wind sailing day, with the big spinnaker flying in just heading in the right direction.

Getting closer to the end, the breakfast tacos this morning included everything you could imagine, including fresh green beans!

Some sad news from the crew of a family tragedy and we are a still a long way from anywhere, just have to keep on keeping on.

Fired up the Honda and made some electricity, chilled out and expected to see other sail boats today. Only one showed up on the horizon, but way behind us, under working sails and with our spinnaker they again disappeared over the horizon.

As we were having taco salad with grilled chicken or beef, your choice the sun set over the horizon on the other side of St Lucia and we had our first view of LAND in 20 something days. The silhouette of the gran peton mountains were a sight to be seen at 40+ miles away. The crew erupted in cheer, song and dance. We’ll okay, just the cheer.

We are currently ghosting in between a carnival cruise ship, a ferry to St Martin, an Oil Tanker to somewhere and several other presumed sailboats ahead of us that barely show up on radar, but AIS shows them all within about 8 miles of us.

Exciting stuff to say the least, we’ll go a round the tip of St Lucia and probably drop anchor for the night and wait till morning to get into the marina and declare victory. Tho as soon as the anchor goes down and hooks, its Rum and Diet time! As its still a partial victory. Then to clear customs and see what we can see in Rodney Bay, St Lucia.

AIS shows us following Vulcan Spirit in, its 7.3 miles ahead of us.

Bacon, we still have more bacon to cook, everyone loves bacon, so come get some bacon!

Tomorrow we celebrate!

Course over ground: 264 Speed over ground: 5.2kn Total miles through water: 944 Miles to destination: 16 kn (as a crow).

We saw our first sight of land today – it was the Gran Piton during sunset and it was a beautiful sight to see – how fantastic!!  We should be anchored by early morning and in our slip before noon.  It was all I could do to not jump up and down screaming, “land a ho”, “land a ho”!!!  Considering I am the only woman on this boat with 3 men, perhaps I should keep my mouth shut!

Boat still operating in GMT time, so I have no idea on what time it really is, its dark and its my shift, 0100-0400 GMT seems late or early, but I just checked local time and its only 9pm, so we should be getting ready to go party! That is still at least a day away.

Another great day, sunny, calm seas, light winds – so much so that we took down the spinnaker and tried to use one engine for awhile (30mins). The engine at low RPM was barely doing better than the spinnaker, so put the sail back up, and an hour or two later the winds had come back up to over 10 knots so that the spinnaker would stay flying. We did change sides of the boat we were running the spinnaker on when we dropped it, which gave us a better run at our course.

Ham and Cheese omelets for breakfast – we still have lots of egs, you buy them by the flat with 30 eggs per flat. I think we have 2 flats left after 3 weeks on the run.

Ran the generator, made some water, cleaned up the bilge in the port engine room, mounted the bilge switch that was just floating around. Used the shore cable to move the Generator to the bow, so that all the noise went down wind away from us – much better to relax away from the noise.

Scallopini de Pollo in a lemon button sauce for dinner, came out pretty good. Again no left overs, so thats a good sign.

Overall it seemed like a slow day on the miles front but we are within 200 miles now, and the wind picked up after dark, and we are surfing down some waves at 11 knots straight toward the finish line. Started to checking the paperwork to make sure we have everything we need to enter St Lucia, and know where to go.

Christine is ready for some girl chat, she has had enough of the testosterone on board. I offered to paint my nails if that’d help, but don’t really think thats what she had in mind.

The master toilet is broke today, Marvin fixed it once, it broke again, I fixed it – it should work for now. Not a fun job, but when something breaks you gotz to fix it. I’m really surprised they let me cook dinner tho.. *smile* It was just the flush pedal that needed some adjustment, so it was not a very nasty job… but it could have been.

We have a report from one on Ron’s buddies that we are ahead of 143 of the 200 boats that started in the ARC. We are expecting to see some boats but still haven’t seen any. With 200 miles left to go, they should be around here somewhere, maybe tomorrow we’ll see a couple. Course we did use our engines quite a bit the first week, so its not really fair to compare our position against those that only sailed and left 3 days before us.

Crew is really getting anxious about having someone else cook some food and clean up after us. Marvin and Ron are ready to get home after being gone for over 2 months. Christine wants to stay here till after Christmas – but neither of us have vacation left and some of these extra days are unpaid time off.

It still looking like a Wednesday arrival – in the dark of course – so now hoping for clear skies too!

Is that Rum I smell, Barbados is over there to the left of us right now. We’d stop there first if we had more time. Trade wind sailing is cool, the wakes behind us go up and over the waves as we surf down the waves and up the next one.

Course over ground: 271 Speed over ground: 8.7kn Total miles through water: 731 Miles to destination: 191 kn (as a crow).