20th January
Sweetest Thing
Anthony Richards
Mon 21 Jan 2013 08:31
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20' 36.9 N
044' 51.6 W
The weather was gorgeous today, Amazing
sunshine.
Salad for lunch and Duck pie for yea,
Yum!!
About 4.30pm we saw the most amazing thing ever,
definitly the high light of the trip so far. We had our first whale spotting. It
was swimming all around us. First time i saw it it was just behind the boat and
then swam under the back of it.That was good enough for me, if i didnt see it
again i was happy i saw that, but then it returned. It was behind us again,
Starboard side. Swam straight towards us then right down the side of the boat,
under the front and then propelled off out the front. Got the most amazing
video. We are still trying to work out what kind it was but either way it was
amazing.
So everything going fine, good wind, good boat
speed, sailing along straight towards the British Virgin Islands.
Then......
Just before midnight on Anthonys watch the auto
pilot starts to play up. So start manually steering. I came up onto my watch at
midnight with Anthony saying, we have a problem. The auto pilot was making the
most horendous crunching, wearing sound. So that was it, manually steering from
there on.
Then....
An hour into me steering i go to adjust it to
starboard and crunch.. something happened. No longer had steering to the right,
and i couldnt get the dodgy sounding auto pilot back on, at the same time the
wind increased, we started veering off, i thought we were going to go around in
circles for a while, while i got Anthony up. I thought, that was it, we had no
steering at all. We managed to get the auto pilot back on, still making a
slightly dodgy noise but not as bad as before. Then found out the steering cable
had broke. Now the steering is disconnected and we are running only on the auto
pilot. Fingers crossed this doesnt fail on us again.
Then...
Woke to my 2nd night watch at 6am to Anthony
saying. The wind instruments are now playing up. We had some high winds, up
to 30knots, so the main sail came down. After that the wind hasnt been reading
correctly. This isnt to bad, we can live with this.
So very eventful evening. Fingers crossed the auto
pilot holds up
On the plus side...... WE SAW A WHALE!!!
Amazing!!!
3771nm Done
1018nm to The British Virhin
Islands
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