Sailing around the World, ( presently at Sea )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Fri 8 Oct 2010 07:26
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THURSDAY 7th
OCTOBER 2010 ( Day 11 at Sea
)
Destination :- Mauritius
..................total distance from Coco's Islands to
Mauritius......................... 2,313 miles
distance remaining
...................................................................419
miles
weather
...................................................................good, Sun,
clear skies, and 16 / 20 knot breeze
Sea's......................................................................................Flat
We had a great night sailing, white sails only , on
a broad port reach , so we all got a good nights sleep.
we passed just one ship , ans she was 12 miles away
at the nearest point.
09.00hrs Radio Call :- This was
conducted by " Drammer " again . they have a very good radio system on board,
We are still making ground on the whole fleet, We
know that the official leg ( and race ) was abandoned by W. ARC, but we are
pushing
our lovely " Oyster 56 " hard in an effort to catch
up with some of the boats that left 2 days early,
So far, we have passed most boats in the fleet, and
out of the 20 boats sailing this leg, there are only 4 boats now in front of
us,
We may pass at least 1 more, and with a bit of
carefull sailing, might pass one more,
It is unlikely that we will catch up with " Tucanon
" or " Crazy Horse " but we will finish within a few hours of them
reaching Mauritius,
and that will be good enough for us,
All this keeps us focused, and therefore well
occupied day and night. ( In between naps, reading, and food which is
always the main event of the day.)
We covered 190 n miles in the last 24 hrs, which is
ok.
10.00hrs, We hoisted the " Bag of fear "
again and just took off across a beautifull deep blue sea towards Mauritius, and
the sea was flat,
( well by comparison to other days )
Shortly after this, the instruments alarms started
ringing, cripes ! whats all this , suddenly oll the waypoints on the computers
vanished , along with a lot of information regarding distances, currents,
drifts, etc.
However we are getting used to these unxpected
events , so we set about resetting everything and within 15 minutes , we were
all set again....
BLOG :- A few months ago,
according to Mailasail, statistics showed our blog in 4th place in terms of
readership,
Skipper worked hard at increasing the readership,
and today , we have moved up to 2 nd place and just behind " Vulcanspirit " and
we
appear to have the most diverse readership of
all blogs,
Well done to all our readers, and with a little
more from you and your families, kids, aunts and uncles, grannies ,
friends, work mates,
college students, lecturers, doctors, nurses,
etc. We will make it to No 1 position before the end of the
year.
So, give them the Blog address...... http://blog.mailasail.com/alady
It also seems that a large number of the readers
are non sailors, and follow us every day around the globe, and enjoy almost
living with us,
In the afternoon, we passed " Rodrigues
Island," which is part of the Mauritius group , One interesting here
is in 1977 the locals found
a 12m yacht drifting off the coast of their
Island, The Polish built " Admiral Nevelskoi " had been abandoned 3
years earlier off the coast of Australia,
The owner and skipper decided to abandon the yacht
after he lost his rudder and then the mast, decided to make a raft and took off
, leaving
the damaged , but floating yacht to the mercy of
the sea,
Leonid Lysenko, was lucky to be picked up by a ship
after drifting for 25 days, and yet the boat survived another 4,000 miles and 3
years at sea.
Now, the moral of this storey is
:- never leave your ship, untill it is slipping under the
waves, Always step UP into your life raft....
Now , Prayer is a powerfull thing, but there is a
storey going about this guy at sea in his boat and he runs straight into
a tropical storm, In danger of sinking , he prays
to God, " Oh God, this is your friend in need, I know I have not
been in touch
with you for years, but, BUT, please get me out of
this fix , and I promise I wont bother you again for another few years,
"
I wonder if he was Polish !
Mind you, this would apply to many of us all ,
eaten bread is soon forgotten.
18.00hrs Distance to
destination..............................346 miles ( we covered 188 miles since
18.00hrs yesterday )
Dinner was roast turkey leg and rolled stuffed
Chicken, with pasta and carrots, all very good,
We spent ages plotting and discussing the merrits
of leaving the " Bag of Fear " flying for the night,
And we left it up for the night and had a great
nights sail
Thats all for now,
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde ( Skipper )
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