Day 3 4 5 Las Palmas to Mindelo

Overnight the wind has begun to decrease forcing Altair to sail at bigger angles away from our goal of sailing South down the coast of Africa in a gentle "J" shape towards Cape Verde.

North Atlantic Ocean

ghost bird found dead under sail bag

Ghost bird died on board from exhaustion and so was interned to the depths of the North Atlantic Ocean .  RIP feathered friend. 

Altair gibed one final time in the morning and did her best to sail South and keep the waves from rolling the wind out of the sails.  Eventually, as the forecast forewarned, we ran out of enough wind to move the substantial Altair and had to make the decision to turn on the engine.  We doused (took down) the giant spinnaker and sheeted the main sail in tight to center line.  

Tanker 

Now we would motor with sails up directly on course.  It would be easy to figure our arrival time to Mindelo Cape Verde now; we would be across the line on Thursday night.  This would mean we would sail about 49 hours and motor about 54 hours.   Motor sailing is surely not as exciting or fun as sailing, but it does have its own advantages. 

Scrabble on the bridge of Altair

It also let myself and mate Marc get the salt off the boat on Day 5 before we arrived Mindelo.

Marc makes white boat more white

shiny shimmering yachty stuff

I may not have yet come outright and said it but on this voyage the Altair crew is eating very healthily and well.  Thanks for that Leanne :)  (for those that have read my past trip blogs where i dedicated pages to describe the food prepared, well...... i just haven't had that kinda time but it might happen on the next leg) 

She is exactly as friendly as that smile indicates and cool accent from South Africa to boot

I know that I was disappointed that Altair wasn't able to sail the entire distance.... but the sunset that greeted us at the finish line in Cape Verde was not disappointing 

I will be entering this shot in the ARC photo contest

And so we finished ARC leg 1 in first place; 12 hours ahead of the next finisher.  Boats will continue to arrive until Sunday.  Leg 2 or ARC starts Wednesday afternoon.  Until then there will be little boat work and lots of exploring.  Maybe if the wind blows the captain and i will kiteboard.  You have noticed there are more photos than words here on this post.   There is more story to this adventure of course but its been a struggle to get it down in 1's and 0's for me this time around.  Thanks for reading!