Indian Ocean - Day 10
Anastasia
Phil May and Andrea Twigg
Thu 11 Oct 2012 18:15
18:55.8S 062:02.8E 2090 miles covered, 270
miles to go
Andrea was right. The new symbol on the
spinnaker was a bad luck sign. At 2am there
was a gust of wind, only about 25 knots, but the spinnaker collapsed and
re-filled with a bang, exploding into ribbons. When we got it down we
found that some of the halyard block assembly came down with it, torn off by the
power of the explosion. We are now reduced to using only white sails until
we can get the spinnaker halyard fixed.
Fortunately the wind has remained around 20 knots
so we are making good progress with the regular sails, despite our course being
downwind. The only annoyance is that we are now having to zig zag because
we can only sail efficiently if we go either dead downwind or 35 degrees off the
wind.
We were about a 90 miles ahead of Gunvor this
morning, with about 80 hours left to run. They have a spinnaker up but I
think they will need lighter winds than these to overhaul us. The
winds are decreasing as we approach Mauritius, so it might be close, but
the good news is that we now have a 1.5 knot current which keeps us going pretty
fast regardless of the wind.
6.6 knots or more will get us to Mauritius in time
to dine out on Andrea's
birthday.
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