Beating to St. Lucia on Aqualuna!
Around the world with the Aqualunies
Jonathan & Gabrielle Lyne
Sun 9 Dec 2007 13:27
Doom and gloom on board, more frustration than anything. The winds have come
in from the SW so we are having to beat or at least we were. Jonathan had a
general inspection of the deck and found the whole boom had come away from
the goose neck fitting attached to the mast!! Only up side is that thank God
we found it in daylight and nothing terrrible happened during the strong
squalls. We seem to have had a lot of trouble with our Selden mast fittings, or the riggers;
split pins not split at the ends which we found on the deck when going down
through Biscay and clevis pins not inserted into spreaders (which we found
in Turkey and delayed our cruise with invited friends on board) and now the
main pin holding the boom to the mast having fallen out because the securing
pin at one end had pulled out. Strangely they don't use a simple arrangement
of a pin with washers and split pins at either end. So it is now temporarily
mended but we have to go carefully which may delay our arrival in St. Lucia.
Really sad as originally we were doing so well.
The Caribbean fish curry last night was good, mild enough not to kill the
taste of the fish and I think Ex Exe enjoyed it as well.
We saw another yacht down on our port side a few miles away during the
night. Great fun using Allan's 'Skyscout' which is a star gazer using GPS.
It works by homing in on a star which you pin point by aiming it at the star
then clicking a button, then you press the information tab and it will tell
you all about the star, how many light years away it is, how many years it
takes for the light from the star to reach earth, the origin of it's name,
usually Arabic as they used them for guidence in the dessert and on their
sailing dows in ancient times; it also tells you what part of a star
constellation it belongs to. Canopus' light, a S. Hemisphere star, which we
see now is the light given out by the star in the 18C that is how long it
can take to reach earth, makes you feel very small.
The squalls seem to have gone so we are nice and hot and dry rather warm and
wet.
All from the Aqualunies.