I shouldn’t have written so confidently that we had passed Gloria of Southampton…. Shortly after I had sent the last blog, her captain, Tim, greeted us on VHF and informed us that his crew had been whipped into shape and they would be pulling out all the stops to regain the ground they had lost to us. So, the battle began…. and they gradually gained on us, indeed they came so close, we caught them on one of our fishing lines! Having cut them free, they proceeded to overtake us … with plenty of opportunity for mutual admiration and photos/videos (I’m looking forward to seeing us in action … maybe we’ll learn how we can improve). Good fun, but the battle wasn’t over yet. Eventually, they managed to hold their “kite” on a more downwind heading than we could and thus gain some northing so we went our own ways.


By dusk on Day 2, the wind seemed to be dropping so we made the decision to break free from the pack by gybing and sailing dead downwind with the genoa poled out, i.e., wing-on-wing, to seek more wind further north. It was a bit of an educated gamble and a bit of a lumpy ride, but by morning we had indeed found winds back up over 10 knots whereas the others reported less wind on the morning SSB net, so we gybed again and are now more-or-less heading East, on track for the Azores. Further north of us it seems a cold front will pass so we have requested a forecast from Chris Parker to see how it may affect us and what route he recommends for us from here.
So, life onboard has been quite relaxed. We have been keeping the batteries topped up by running the generator regularly and today we all had hot showers while making water, what bliss. We live in relative luxury onboard Mazu compared with the the days of cruising with my dad some 40+ years ago….. but we have a lot more systems that can go wrong.