Wind a plenty – Days 1 and 2

My turn

After a bit of a traffic jam leaving the marina, at 11am on Tuesday 27^th November the massed fleet of the ARC 2012 Cruising Division powered across the start line in 15 – 20 knots of breeze – ENE. What a sight.

The start

Worries about wind from the wrong direction, or not enough, were quickly forgotten as we sailed southwards along the coast of Gran Canaria into the wind acceleration zone at the bottom of the island.

Through the night we had winds up to 35 knots (consistently Force 7 or 8 – near gale or gale!) and Murphy sailed beautifully with the genoa poled out to starboard and the main on the port side (both well reefed).

The moon, the goose-wing and the RMYC burgee

We all got soaked when a squall came through with torrential rain, but thank heavens for the cockpit bimini.

Sunrise Day 2

Day 2 things calmed down a bit with a nice warm breeze- 27 in the morning reducing to around 20 in the afternoon. Busy day – we repaired a gas leak and sadly broke the mast connection of the genoa pole, so have had to bear away to around 230 degrees rather than our preferred course of around 255, but we are still making good progress to add to the 180 nautical miles achieved in the first 24 hours. We have a plan to fix the pole tomorrow.

So all is well as we sail fast over blue water and under blue skies.

Andrew, Lucinda, Jake and Jeff

Just before sunset Day 2