Busy Oceans

It must be because of leaving in November, but I have never seen this many sailing boats out in the atlantic ocean -- in the last 5 hours have seen 5 other boats, all going in the same direction..

When the first one appeared, i was steering and as it was right ahead, so a 'fly by' was always going to happen..As we got closer we had the strongest wind of the day, and we were doing 37 knots as we flashed past the cruising catamaran about 15m off..

I was concentrating hard to keep that safe but still interesting distance off, so did not get a good a view of the boat. But it looked like a 45 ft British cat, and it seemed to be the flying the flag of the ARC race..so that's perhaps what all the others were doing, they had all left the Canaries for St Lucia at the same time..

Kevin Escoffier took some video from Banque Pop, and later sent it off via the satellite comms system - so look out for that. Hopefully the cat will have taken some video too and will put it online when they get to the Caribbean.

It may appear to be a crowded ocean today, but every boat crossing the Atlantic is on its own grand adventure, already alone in its own plot of water, and soon each one will be scores of miles from another.Hope they all have a good crossing. I wonder where on earth we will be when they are sipping their first rum punch?

Anyway, that's the serendipitous excitement of the day...

Brian