Day seven - merry Christmas everyone!
Adonde
Neil & Tracy Batcheler
Mon 25 Dec 2006 19:01
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Noon position 20:25.5N 24:35.9W
Day's run a pretty sad 110nm.
And a merry Christmas one and all! Yet another
disappointing 24hr run, with light winds meaning a night under engine and
therefore slow slow slow. We decided to drop the gennaker before dark as the
wind was dropping and it's a bugger of a sail to handle if it all goes wrong, so
best dealt with in daylight. And it did go wrong - the snuffer (a lightweight
"sock" that pulls down from the top of the sail to smother it and collapse it)
got stuck about a third of the way down meaning we couldn't collapse the sail.
Luckily it wasn't particularly windy but even so it took an almighty wrestle to
drop the thing and keep it on deck (actually a quarter of it ended up in the
drink). Much relief all round once it was stuffed back into it's
locker!
The wind picked up a bit this morning so we're
sailing again, but still pretty slowly. Boats a little further south are getting
more wind so hopefully we will soon...there are seven other boats that all
check in by radio twice a day so we get an idea of where everyone is and how
they're doing.
Today dawned grey again, and we even had a bit of
rain this afternoon which was unexpected - I shall be contacting our tour rep
forthwith as this was most certainly not what we signed up for. Still, we got
our Christmas lunch of confit de canard etc with crackers and silly hats so
all's well. And what's more Santa seemed to find his way here after all,
Tracy was quite right. As usual.
Might be eating a lot of bananas from here on in as
they've all ripened at once. Oh goody!
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