" A LADY TRIP " Sailing around the World and avoiding the shite at home, ( presently sailing the pacific , south towards Equidor)
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 9 Feb 2010 04:51
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MONDAY 8th February 2010
01.00hrs, The skipper takes over watch from Fats
and Aileen,
there are some yachts showing up on the radar off
to our port side, and one to starboard,
They stay most of the night with us, obviously
travelling at nearly the same speed as ourselves,
03.00hrs The wind increases to about 16 / 17 knots,
still light enough so we continue motor sailing with just the Mainsail in
operation.
The sea state is still fairly flat, which is just
great, as we had so much big bloody seas in the Atlantic that we could have
filled two buckets
with vomit from some of our poor passangers. yuch
!
05.20hrs Kevin relieved the skipper on watch, The
stars were still dancing in the sky and the " Milky Way" looks as good as ever
down here,
We are just about 250miles north of the equator and
we have a bottle of Champaigne specially retained for that
crossing.
08.00hrs, the wind had increased further to 22
knots , so we shut down the engine and sailed along merrily at 8
knots,
Oh ! we havent seen this before, A squid on the deck, we get lots of
flying fish, but a " squid" thats a first for us.
10.00hrs We set up a goosewing as the wind
goes further behind and has increased to 26knots, now we are scooting along at 9
knots.
however, the sky is clouding over and the seas are
building, still nothing serious.
Rain drops start appearing.
13.00hrs The wind shifts 60 degrees and there
are some very menacing clouds on the horizon, Bloody hell, is this one of
those Squalls
we have heard about so often down here, Beads of
sweat appear on " Fat's" forehead, But in the end it just turned out to be
rain,
and lots of it, for the next three hours it pissed
out of the heavens, still it washed the sails and got rid of all the
salt.
14.00hrs We started the genny and turned on
the watermaker, Ohhhhh shit , a leak, this time caused by the skippers work
on
the unit yesterday, blast the feckin thing, we will
have to take it apart again when the sea gets flatter,
However its not serious,
we had a light lunch and " Fats" then vanished for
his Siesta , We notice that Kevin spends a lot of time in his cabin
recently,
Roumer has it that he is busy writing love letters
to Fei and is going to put them in a bottle , complete with address , to be
chucked overboard
in the event of " A LADY " going under, or we
get done in by PIRATES..
It rained all afternoon, we have not seen this
amount of rain since last May.
We are all now becomming real book worms, even
sharing books, how about that,
Actually there is a system of sharing or swopping
books between all the yachts on the trip.
18.00 The Skipper put on the Dinner, Simple today
as its kinda rough. Chicken drumsticks, Creamed spuds, and baked beans. yum
yum.
We ate in the cockpit and K just had a small
portion as a precaution against the other thing,
21.00hrs The Skipper took the first watch
21.00hrs to 00.00hrs
Kevin will take the second watch 00.00hrs to
04.00hrs
Donal and Aileen.......................04.00hrs
to 08.00hrs
good night for now.
Signed, Stephen Hyde, ( Skipper
)
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