Sailing around the World ( presently at sea , The Coco's Islands / Maritius )

A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Tue 28 Sep 2010 01:29
MONDAY  27th  SEPTEMBER  2010    (  Day   1  )
 
Distance to Maritius ...................2,313 miles
 
 06.00hrs, The three seniors got busy preparing the boat to go to sea. Neil was a bit slower today, too much party time last night.
 
It was a bright morning, plenty of wind, and Bruce ( the weather adviser ) is still holding tough with his weather pridictions. ie a low
forming to the north of our rum line,
Because the start has been oficially abandoned, yachts began to leave the lagoon around 06.30hrs,
Aileen made another batch of brown bread with the mix that Grattan brought out to the boat last January.
 
We had an email from Annette in " Botique Marine " back in Darwin,  Skipper  sent all invoices for work done in Mackay
to Ireland for payment last July, but whatever happened, poor Anette and the O'Briens never got paid, This will will be sorted
shortly.  Its amazing how things go .  We are still waiting for a  refund from George in Equador ( since last Feb ) and the cost of the damage done to " A Lady "during the Pearl regatta ( last May ) totalling nearly $ 2500........ Is it a case of " Out of sight, out of mind "
 
We went to lift the rib onto the derricks , but the flippen battary was very weak, and struggled to lift the rib up, so we used our small block and tackle to give a hand.  When all this was complete, we weighed anchor and set offf for the abandoned starting line, along with " Lady Lisa " and " Chessy "
and followed shortly after by " Destiny " and " Wild Tigris "
 
We had another message from Bruce,   There is a Low forming now out about 120 miles WSW of our present position, so he advises us to head south
to 15.30 degrees South  ( we are presently at 12.2  S  )
We got an early taste of the weather with a real heavy shower and 40 knot winds shortly after we started. but it
eased back after an hour or so. and the sailing became much more pleasent, even if it was rolly.
 
14.00hrs, we could see " Voyageur " and  " Tzigane "  on the horizon, all boats heading in the same direction.
At this stage, we had 2 reefs in the mainsail and one reef in the staysail, and we were still sailing along at 8+ knots.
but we had a belly full of showers for the rest of the day.
 
Oh , nearly forgot, we have been always advised not to bring shells and especially wooden souvineers onto the baot as they could contain
unwanted bugs etc.  Well yesterday , while cleaning up the mess in the Owners Cabin, skipper and Terry came across a wooden
stick, hidden under some clothes so it would not be found, and the blinking thing was crawling with some kind of wood eating beatle,
There was dust everywhere and dead creepy crawlies all over the place. This object came from  " Fiji "
We removed the offending item and threw it over board, and spent a considerable amount of time examining the presses and shelves around that area
and using bleech to kill off any eggs lying around,  Luckily for us, they do not appear to have attacked the boat's timberwork so far.
 
We had beans on Aileens brown bread for an evening snack, no one was hungry, too much rolling around,
21.00 hrs  Radio Net.  listining for any urgent messages,
 
00.00hrs   Distance travelled..................................88 miles
 
Thats all for now .
 
Signed :-   Stephen Hyde   ( Skipper )