Sailing around the World
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Fri 14 Jan 2011 09:54
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THURSDAY 13 th JANUARY
2011 ( Presently at Sea ,
Destination............. St. Helena )
00.00hrs We sailed 200 miles in the
last 24 hrs from midnight Tuesday night to Midnight Wednesday
night.
We still have a current of 1 knot against us all
the time,
The weather is poor, with plenty of showers, strong
gusts, very uncomfortable choppy seas, But the speed is good.
It was so soooooo cold, that skipper had on 3
layers of clothes, plus a full set of oil skins over the lot, not to
mention the
boots, hat and gloves, brrrrr, brrrrr, the sooner
we are back in the tropics, the better.
08.00hrs Emily spotted a trawler a few miles
away and caused such excitment , skipper thought that we had discovered a
Mermaid,
or something very rare, like the Allbatrosses we
saw yesterday, What majestic birds, a sea bird that has a wing span of
about 6 feet , and spends most of its life in
the air.......
09.00hrs, RADIO CALL ....We took around
40 / 50 miles out on almost all boats, with the exception of " Wild
Tigress "
This roll call takes about 30 minutes to complete
and is usually followed with most boats having chats between them
..
for another 30 / 40 minutes,
We had one flying fish on the deck this morning, we
havent seen one of those for a long time,
12.00hrs, We have sailed 1,000 miles in 5 days,
thats good going by any standards for any cruising boat.
The skies cleared around lunch time and we had a
beautifull day, with some great sailing, ohhhh , that lovely prussian blue
water
surrounding us on all sides, and plenty of white
horses to remind us of the strong breeze pushing us along.
We are still Goose winging , and are now almost 100
miles west of our rum line. the wind shoud go more easterly as we go
further north,
so we decided that we will gybe ( change diraction
directly for St. Helena ) early in the morning.
Most of the fleet are between 100 and 200 miles
east of our position, So they will have a longer sail to St. Henena than us
as it
stands right now, but we should have a
faster course. as we will be reaching and they will be sailing dead
down wind, which is
never very fast. Well thats the
theory.. We will know in a few days who
made the right decision .....
16.50 hrs We have sailed 214 miles in
the 24 hrs since this time yesterday. we will wait untill we reach our
destination for the drink.
Emily prepared a S.A dinner called " Babotie "
basically consisting of minced beef with onions, and all sorts of powders ,
including curry powder, however she began to feel
ill during the process ( it was quite rough at this stage ) so the poor girl
had to return to the cockpit and let Skipper
complete the dish by adding a mixture of egg,s and milk on top and putting the
dishes
in the preheated oven,
BUT, but, he ( skipper ) made the egg thing to
watery and of course it all spilt all over the blinkin oven causing a desperate
burning smell. then the bloody generator shut
down, ohhhhh my gawd ! what next,, next, the generator overheated and shut
itself
down, " Mipes all crity." oh
, we had the dinner first, and it was great,
Later, much later , around midnight, Skipper
and Sham opened up the generator and found that there was no sweet water in
the system,
we also changed the impellor in the raw water
pump, and put the lot all back together again, like " Humpty Dumpty
"
Experts, that is what we will be, blooming experts,
Gawd ! its bleedin freezing again, another night at
sea, Often the skipper wonders if we are normal doing this, no we cant be,
not doing a trip like this, but then its
very exciting as well.
Night watches, :-
21.00hrs / 00.00hrs..................................
Emily,
00.00hrs /
03.00hrs..................................Aileen
03.00hrs
/ 06.00hrs..................................Skipper
06.00hrs / 09.00hrs
.................................Sham
Thats it.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (
Skipper )
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