Sailing around the World, ( Presently at sea )

A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Fri 16 Jul 2010 15:15
FRIDAY   16th  July   2010
 
00.00hrs  Our first waypoint is 300 miles from port Vila,
The world ARC have given us a number of waypoints for the trip to Mackay in Australia, basically keep us out of trouble with reefs.
The first 12 hrs we travelled just a mere 70 miles, for us , its almost like being stopped.
The wind is all over the place as well as being up and down, 23 knots now and 12 knots 15 mins later.
 
03.00hrs,  The wind has reached 23 knots again and its much chillier here at night than previously experienced,  Jackets on to keep warm.
04.00hrs, Skipper called Aileen to do her watch, she has had an extra hour in the scratcher. lucky girl.
We  trimmed the sails and got the maximum out of the boat , soon we had caught up with the leaders, skip was happy and hit the scratcher.
 
06.00hrs, Scotty took over watch, at this stage we had lost some ground again. thats the trouble with going to sleep.
However, it was a beautifull night with all the stars dancing away up there  specially for us.  Its great to be at sea again.
 
08.00hrs,  We decided to have a look at our other cruising chute up forward under the forward bunk.
This was only ever used by us once, and that was on the " Dublin to Dingle " race in 2007. it has never seen the light of day since.
One hour later , we had our solid blue coloured Spinniker up and running. and it was great to have something for any down wind legs to Mackay.
We went from 4.8knots to 6.8 knots , blooming great guns.
 
12.00hrs   we are now 24 hours at sea, and have only travelled a mere 141 miles.. very poor,
However, its a lovely day and we have flat seas for a change.
 
16.00hrs  The wind is going more ahead and we are 5 miles off our course, so we decided to drop the spinniker
and sail white sails only and claw our way back onto the rum line.
MURPHY'S LAW, no sooner was the spinniker on the deck and tidied up, than the flippen wind went aft again and died right down, ahhhhhhh
we could have screamed.... ahhhhhhhh
 
Now , we did spend the day, tweeking and fiddling with the chute and got the most out of it, so we were real happy with all of that.
 
Later , Skipper prepared dinner, This consisted of Boneless leg of lamb, baked potatoes with cream and butter, creamed carrots on crushed cabbage
along with mint jelly,,  all very nice, except the lamb was not good,
Its frustrating to go to all that trouble and find the meat is crappy..  however , we swallowed the lot anyway.
 
 
The watches for tonight are as follows  :-        21.00hrs  /  00.00hrs         Aileen,
                                                                   00.00hrs  /  03.00hrs         Skipper
                                                                   03.00hrs  /  06.00hrs         Scotty
                                                                   06.00hrs  /  09.00hrs         Skipper
 
That all for today,
 
Signed  :-  Stephen Hyde     ( Skipper )