" A LADY TRIP " Sailing around the World,

A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Fri 21 May 2010 07:49
THURSDAY    20th   MAY    2010    ( presently at sea, between Bora Bora and the Cook Islands )
 
We had a good night at sea, just one or two squalls, but even at that, the wind never went above 28 knots, but
the squalls brought plenty of rain , and umbrella's are useless at sea.
Not having the radar is a bit of a bummer, it is great for identifying the squalls and their direction. we miss that piece of equipment.
 
However, we have the AIS working again , so we could see " Ronja" and " Dreamcatcher" for most of the night untill we went
too far ahead of them and lost the signals. the range must be approx 15  / 20 miles, depending on the height of their AIS ariels.
 
Early morning saw plenty of cloud and wind, A steady 22 / 25 knot trade wind, so we were averaging 8 knots. happy out.
The skipper was still the worst for wear,  very tired and spent most of the day asleep in the cockpit.
Fats and Scotty spent most of the day playing Sudoku. It seems infectious.....
 
Fats did a light lunch, he's great, always hungry, so tends to feed everyone else as a bye product.
Later we re rigged the fishing line/ rod and let it out 1.5 times the length of " A Lady",, This, according to Fats and Scotty , is the recommended distance
the line should be out the back end of the boat,  We will have to wait and see..
On the ARC transatlantic, Mark always had the line out so far, it was impossible to see the lure jumping across the surface, but we caught
plenty of fish. and have the photo's to prove the case
 
16.00 hrs, The skipper woke up, shuddered , and got going in the gally, prepared belly of Pork , roast spuds, creamed potatoes,
carrotts and cabbage,cooked with goose fat and apples... the crackling was bloody marvelous, and all served up at 19.30hrs
During this operation ( cooking ) we ran the generator, to feed energy to the cooker, make water, and charge the batteries,
 
Since we replaced the two dud batteries, everything is working much much better, and they only need charging once or twice a day
at most, whereas last month, we had to run the generator 4 times a day at least to keep the battery bank topped up.
 
20.00hrs, with the wind now at 26knots, we reefed down the boat for the nighty, and were still doing 8 knots,
but much more upright and stable in the building sea's.
 
Thats it for now,
 
Signed  :-    Stephen Hyde    ( Skipper )