Every time we have a watch change the person leaving tells the person going on how we are doing and if anything special has happened. Nowadays the question "have you seen any other boats?" seems to produce nothing more than laughs. I was sitting behind the wheel listening to music, looking at the horizon and thinking during my afternoon watch. Although I was constantly looking out I kind of stuck to the same piece of water and sky, therefore I told myself to have a 360 degrees horizon check every ten minutes or so. The sun had just hidden behind our headsails when I started to do a serious look around thinking this is hardly necessary since here aren't any boats, haha, but it should be done anyway. There it was, I had to look again, a "real" ship, with three masts and square sails, closing in on us from behind. Their sails looked black, I thought of pirates, but then the sun emerged from the cloud above them and shone on white sails, the moment was gone. Back to reality, pirates of today uses RIBs, I called the girls up so they could see the impressive ship. We discussed where it might be heading, I guessed Antigua. As it got closer we could see that it had four masts, the aft one without square sails. We heard something on VHF channel 16, but couldn't make out more than "….sea cloud, sea cloud do you copy?." We went through the ARC-participants list but found no boat named Seacloud. Seeing no other boats around, we figured it was the big ship who tried to contact us. Knowing the limits of our VHF antenna we didn't respond immediately, but waited for them to get even closer. Then they sent a new message over the VHF, this one was loud and clear, it was a woman speaking. We responded and agreed to change to channel 68. The woman asked us very politely about our name, origin and destination. We found out that the ship was named Seacloud, rang a bell in the back of my head, and that they were bound for St. John and then Antigua. The conversation ended with her telling us "you look absolutely beautiful, good luck with the competition and bon voyage." That was it, a short friendly meeting with a pirate ship on the Atlantic ocean, our day's most interesting event.

We are doing better speed now, maybe we will be in St. Lucia on the 15^th . But we have some problems with the DuoGen, it is colliding with Monitor, I have tried to fix it with results that lasts no longer than 24-hours. Today we might take it out of the water, then we will have to start the engine to generate power. Don't worry we will be fine anyway, might even make us a bit quicker with nothing dragging behind. Watch out Zahara, we will cool the champagne and celebrate if we overtake you! /The Captain