41:47S 57:06E

Tales of Amok's Adventures
Mike Jones
Fri 7 Jan 2011 19:46
DAY 20 - Friday 7th January 2011- Southern Ocean

TWIN HEADSAILS ARE GO! GO! GO!

Before we left Simon's Town, we spent some time preparing our downwind sailing configuration, so with a westerly wind, the first in 20 days, we have had a chance to try it out.
We poled out the big reacher headsail on the main alloy spinnaker pole to port and the Yankee was poled out to starboard with the carbon pole. Mainsail was snug in it's stow bag secure on the boom.

We started at about 8 knts and the ran for 12 hours at 10.5 knts and then the wind and sea picked up and for a few hours this morning at 12 knts with a maximum of 12.4 knts whilst surfing down waves when it was gusting 30 knt true. Decided to shorten sail to poled Yankee and poled staysail, so we are now making 7 to 8 knts, forecast is for 35 knts later so we will leave it like that. Whew ! Bit of a struggle to get the big reacher furled in 28 knts of wind, worked up quite a sweat.

Our resident gastro gnome, Tmoby has been busy in the galley preparing chili con carne ( I think the carne bit is chopped kudo biltong) and rice for dinner, Danish open sandwiches with his version of dill dressing made from mayonnaise, garlic and hot English mustard (great stuff) and beetroot for lunch and he conjured up 5 boulder cakes (his version of rock cakes but four times the size).

We have westerlies forecasted for the next three or four days so we should catch up on some miles.

I can't claim it was my idea cause I read about it somewhere, but I need to comment about our latest safety jackstays.
We have the usual variety which run up and down the boat and on which we clip our safety harnesses when going on deck.
The new ones are high level, shoulder high, which run around the cockpit, (yellow of course...ed)there was a certain amount of mirth and sarcastic comment when they were set up, like somewhere to dry the washing etc. Well it may look a bit girlish but we are totally sold on them, it makes it so easy to get in and out of the cockpit and to move about the cockpit, even if you are dragging damp knickers on the end of your safety line ! Anyway, they are here to stay on this boat.

over and out
Mikey

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