passage
Astra
Jeremy & Sally Paul
Wed 3 Jun 2009 20:58
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The night before we set off from NZ we had dinner
in the yacht club and met this couple. He was in quite a steam as the storm that
was forecast did not really arrive, and he felt they should have gone earlier.
They have a 44 ft Nordic and have been sailing for quite a few years. He got
into conversation with Jeremy and I could see they were not hitting it off.
On mishearing the size of boat we had, the fact there was only two of us,
and me with little experience, he then made it quite clear he thought we were
mad. I then realised he thought we had a 51 ft boat not 57. Oops. How many of
you lot think we are nuts. Actually I put my hand up to that one too. With this
in mind the next day I nearly had a little temper tantrum, hoping the
captain would throw me off. No such luck. So in our usual style we set off from
Opua in a blaze of glory, and as usual Jeremy yells one thing and I do another,
but we made it out of the berth unscathed. On the first day we had
fantastic winds of 25 to 30 knots up our bottom and were storming along at 10
knots.
Over the next couple of days the wind has shifted
around and also dropped. So we have set the boat up for goose winging and have
covered quite a lot of ground. We are not very quick at jibing yet, but at least
we have managed to move the spinnaker pole and reset it up without getting
muddled up.
Someone wrote to us and said hope we are not
bickering yet. Us bicker!! How dare they!!! You must bear in mind that one
little shove and there is no coming back, especially Jeremy. He did try and go
over the man overboard technique with me, but for some reason I wasn't
concentrating.
Jeremy has now found the blue pillow and assuming
the position, I think he is quite happy. I tried to persuade him that it was his
turn to do mother watch, but he said that his stomach felt a little
queesy!!! Managed to wolf down a full English breakfast
though.
By the way you might wonder where we are heading.
Because of all the delay and having to be in Darwin for the beginning of July we
have had to miss Sydney, so are now going to Bundaberg, just above Brisbane.
Only a mere 1340 miles.
Nothing of huge interest to report, so I will sign
off now and wake the old boy up for his watch.
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