I slept better last 'night: having relocated to the starboard saloon bunk.
Mindelo lies at 25° West and Barbados at 59.5° West; about 34.5° to the west of Mindelo, which is about 3.5° further north than Barbados at a latitude of 13.5° North. As of 0500 today, 20/12/23, Bonny was at around 13° North, 43° West. We had therefore increased our westward longitude by roughly 18°, which means we have covered roughly, just over half the distance between Mindelo and Barbados.
We're 1064 miles from Mindelo and 970 from Barbados. Also, just over half way between the two. It's taken us 9.5 days to cover that distance (the difference between that number and this day 11 is because I counted our first part day at sea as day 1 and we're only part way through our 10th 24 hrs at sea) but we expect to cover the second half of the passage a little more quickly than the first, because typically the winds are stronger and more consistent on the western side of the Atlantic. Certainly in 2016 on Arctic Smoke, we experienced some exhilarating sailing thanks to the renown "Christmas winds". If that proves to be the case this time, we may arrive as early as the 27th!
Dawn arrived around 0530 but with clouds on the horizon to our East the sun was still hidden at 0603 when its light finally wiped Venus from the light blue dawn sky higher up.
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