Day six - sunshine!
Adonde
Neil & Tracy Batcheler
Sun 24 Dec 2006 16:58
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Well today brought the first bright weather since
leaving Las Palmas; it's been pretty overcast and dull and while not exactly
cold at around 20 degrees we've been missing the sun, but today all is well. The
sun's out, it's a bit warmer, the wind's dropped and so has the sea,
and we were visited twice by dolphins. Can't be bad.
After the last few days of strong winds it seems to
have settled down to around 10-15kts from the north east, which is probably
slightly less than ideal but better than too much!
We've had to play around with the sails a bit to
get the optimum setup, bearing in mind we're going pretty much dead downwind.
For the last few days we were using just the genoa on a barber hauler but as the
wind dropped we were unable to keep the sail filled. So we tried goosewinging
(mainsail set on one side, genoa the other) but again there's not enough wind to
keep the sails filled and the swell is still enough to make it difficult to head
absolutely dead downwind so the mainsail kept backing (we had a gybe preventer
on). We've just dropped the other sails and set the gennaker which is working
reasonably well at the moment but I get the feeling we'll be dropping that
before dark and potentially having to motor for a bit. We'll see.
We've had two pods of dolphins drop by, possibly
the same pod twice (we didn't get any names), who as usual cheer us up no end
with their cavorting about around the boat, darting between the hulls and
underneath and leaping through the air. Bloody show-offs, they're so fast it
makes it very difficult to get a good picture but here's a bad one
anyway:
 Not much else to report other than we're a bit
worried about Christmas what with our not having a chimney; Tracy tells me that
Santa is cleverer than that and all will be well but true to form I'm a bit
sceptical.
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