Sailing around the World ( Presently at Sea, Between Bali and the Coco'S Keeling Islands )
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Mon 20 Sep 2010 04:35
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SUNDAY 19th
SEPTEMBER 2010 ( Day 6 )
Ohh no, we are still having trouble with the
alarms, the blinking dept sounder is going off all the time.
There are very high clouds, and sheet lightning
away to the east this time,
All the while, we are Goosewinging and the wind is
getting lighter and lighter. The sails are flogging as we roll like pigs
in the swell,
I always say, this flogging must do more damage to
the sails and rig , than reaching along in a 40knot breeze.
and sure enough, the spinniker pole twisted off the
bottom 4" of the rail on the mast. God what next,!
our bad at the office continues.
We rolled up the headsail, left the broken rail and
pole on the fore deck and motored westwards. ( the wind 10 / 11
knots )
08.00hrs Distance to
destination...................................142 miles
The morning looked much better, and after a few
naps, we were feeling much better,
09.00hrs RADIO NET, We were the
net controllers for today, so we logged everyone's position and then skipper
marked put it all down an his make shift charts, so we could see at a glance all
our positions. We were still doing very well, only one boat in front of
us, that is " Destiny "
and we coulde see them on the horizon in front of
us,( 6.9 miles ahead.) as we could see from the radar.
12.00 hrs 118 miles to go, The wind was now
blowing at 20 knots and we had fixed the broken rail on the mast, so the blue
spinniker
was now in operation and we were bombing along at 9
knots, We were also making ground on " Destiny " ....... would we
have enough
time left to pass him before the finish , which we
expect to be around 02// 04 Hrs tomorrow morning,
Aileen did some sunbathing, Neil did some reading,
keeping out of the sun and minding his lobster colour.
Neil also did his log book, as he is doing a "
Yacht Masters Cert " at Ringaskiddy in Cork and needs the milage and
experience
of a long trip before completing the
course.
Dinner by Aileen consisted of Chicken Snitzels ,
plus creamed spuds, manderine sauce, and some green veg,
It was excellent.
Even though we were almost 1000 miles from bali, it
was incredible the amount of rubbish and flotsom, plastic bags just under the
surface,
rubber shoes,plastic bottles , babies nappies, and
general garbage floating in the sea,,,, It was like a big
tip.
18.00hrs, There were lot of showers passed us
on both sides, but no rain on us, Maybe the Gods are looking favourably on us
today
for a change, and the sailing was great, a steady
20 / 22 knots from the ENE, so we had a starboard pole and real
pleasent sail.
we now had roped in " Destiny " to 2.75 miles as it
got dark, but we had a 3/4 moon shining high in the sky , which
always
makes night sailing ever so more
pleasent.
23 .00hrs We dreww level with Destiny, but he
was 2 miles to the south on our port side, the excitment was good on board, you
know
when everything is going well , and it was for us
now,Our bad day at the office had suddunly improved big time.
The wind gusted up to 26 knots at times as we
surfed down the waves, touching 12.4 knots at times, great sailing,
We were on the limits of what this blue spinniker
will take, any more wind and it would just explode, and as the KITE
is in shreds, we cannot afford to loose this baby.
We considered taking it down a few times, but greed prevented us from doing
that.
Monday Morning,
01.57 hrs we crossed the finish line, 1 mile ahead
of " Destiny " We were delighted, We were the first boat to
finish again, yipeee
We nibbled our way into the bay / lagoon and
dropped anchor, got out the G& T's and relaxed for a while, happy with
the day.
20 minutes later, the radar went completly yellow
with rain squalls, which duly passed over us, pouring rain and squalls of wind
gusting up to 62knots ( just for a few seconds
)
Yeah ! the gods were looking after us
today, timing is everything, and we really got it right here,
Thats all........
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