150 miles to go
Akarana
Graham Deegan
Sun 6 Dec 2009 17:33
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Hi Folks,
Firstly apologies, apparently none of the three
bloggers laid a blog. Blog bound. Sorry.
The story from last night. Our friend who
does the psuedo results still put us in the top slot last night and the
challenge from the little catamaran appears to have subsided. We are
however very closely pursued by a boat called Amoress 2. She gives us time
but at the last time of reporting was about 60 miles in front. We still
apparently held her by a few hours on handicap. Ominously our friend, the
results reporter said, "I hope neither of you have been using your
engines".
In this division it is legal to use your engine but
you will be penalised probably by adding the number of hours that you have used
the engine to your time. In certain circumstances it definitely pays to
take the penalty and we have used the engine for a total of two and half hours
when we were hopelessly trapped under a rain cloud which had killed the wind.
Obviously we don't know if Amoress 2 has used her engine and she does not know
if we have used ours.
We had wind all night and although it was
reasonably strong 12 - 18 knots it was all over the place which made life really
difficult. We think it slow to run dead down wind and have therefore been
gybing through about 50 degrees. The waypoint is dead down wind and it has
been a nightmare to keep the boat on track in these unbelievably shifty
winds. So shifty in fact that it is like sailing down the Medina
river. Sometimes you can attribute a reason for these shifts, clouds etc.
but at other times they come out of an apparently clear sky.
Interestingly, last night was seriously dark for the first part until the
moon came up. For some reason we have not had a really dark sky,
even when the moon was not up, since we left Las Palmas.
All in all, I would say that last night was
frustrating and very difficult to pick the right tack. However we did only
take the kite down once for a squall in that time although we had numerous gybes
and sail changes. We have been trying to run with the half ounce spinnaker
for most of the time. This is brand new, huge and real weapon however it
could and probably would explode at around 25 knots and we have seen a couple of
22 knots, so running on the edge. Not that we are being over competitive
you understand, but just to keep the interest up.
This morning we got a call from our Irish mates on
A Lady, an Oyster 56 which is actually 61 foot long, so much bigger than us and
therefore faster. We have been hanging around with them for days and when
we actually get really close we appear to sail away from them. We
were therefore gutted to get a call from them this morning when they reported
that they had 20 to 25 knot winds all night and they were ahead of us. No
by much but enough to make us realise we could have done better. We had a
frustrating night and they had a fantastic night. They went further south
than us. Let's hope Amoress didn't and she has a stack of engine hours. A
Lady has about 14 engine hours.
That has left us feeling a little flat.
However a fantastic lunch, a bit of a fry up, has cheered us somewhat and we
thrash on.
We all had a beard trim yesterday and I certainly
felt better for it. Sparks alias DB also went for the trendy 3 day growth
look, however nothing seriously lost as he won't be home for a few weeks.
Not unsurprisingly he looked like a (slightly) older Joe which was strangely
reassuring as we would not want anything to come out of the wood work at this
late stage.
Talking about Sparks - the guy is still a weapon on
the foredeck. Sharp as a blade and as reliable as always and over the
years the odd bit of friendly fire (slashing) has always been forgiven.
Nothing has changed - a national treasure and in fact when the sad day comes we
are going to have him stuffed and put on display. As yet it has not been
decided between the RORC museum or the Cowes Library.
I must say his conversion to enviromentalism,
coming so late in life has rather take me by surprise. However one can
only feel deep admiration for his cries of protest when the crew throw beer cans
over the side. I have tried to console him by telling him that the cans
make lovely homes for little fish. Fortunately this does appear to comfort
him and when I see the look of joy in his face I realise how much pleasure I
derive from having him in my pastoral care.
The other great joy is to see the pleasure he now
takes in washing up. He has been talking about taking quality assurance
lessons from James Martin the well known six sigma guru. Sparks, because
it would not now be right to refer to him as DB hopes to the first to really
scope out a quality regime for washing up, maybe a book, certainly a few papers
on the subject are a distinct possibility. Although you can never recover
from being a dirt box there is no doubt that he is surely in
remission.
Lastly, it would not be right to end without saying
that I received a compliment about my blogging from the finest bike mechanic in
Gurnard. I was seriously moved by this and felt it important to share this
with my fellow bloggers. They were of course very pleased for me however
this could have been the course of the blog binding. If so, I do
apologise.
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