The Last Day of Summer!
Aurora_b
Mike and Liz Downing
Thu 28 Feb 2013 11:13
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It's been a bit wet and windy again here. It's rained most
days at some point, but mostly showers and once the rain has cleared the sun's
come out and the days have been okay, and sometimes hot. Not so last
weekend. It rained solidly on Friday and Saturday without a break, heavy,
wind driven rain. Another weather system had started in the north
along the Queensland coast and increased in intensity as it moved south,
following a track not unlike ex-cyclone Oswald a couple of weeks earlier. The
forecast was for winds up to 40kts or more and unlike when Oswald came
past us, the winds here did get much closer to forecast. Again we took
the bimini down and lashed everything securely in readiness for the strong
winds. Prior to Oswald, we had never taken the bimini down for strong winds
since it went up on leaving Las Palmas over 4 years ago, so to take it
down twice within 3 weeks, shows the violence of the weather here when it turns
ugly. In situations like this we try to have the boat ready to
sail/motor to somewhere safe to anchor should the mooring give way. The
instruments go on and at night we have the wind alarm and anchor alarm on, just
in case. The wind was strong throughout the 2 days and the
maximum strength we recorded on the boat was 33kts. Again we got
a lot of protection from Scotland Island and other places
had much stronger winds. Today, 28th February, is officially the
last day of summer, as they repeatedly remind us on the radio. It's raining
again and rain is forecast to continue all day tomorrow. Hope the autumn is
a bit drier - we have a deck to work on and varnishing to do in the
cockpit. It's times like these that we think fondly of Porto Santo, just to the
northeast of Madeira. When we arrived there on our first trip back in 1995, it
hadn't rained for 4 years!
Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty good days and we did make
good progress on a couple of projects - we've now replaced our cutter stay with
a furling system. Up to now we've had to hank on the staysail or storm
jib in the old fashioned way. The furler should make it much easier and
give us a 'lower gear' when the winds gets up. At the moment we don't have a
sail for it, but a local sailmaker is in the process of converting our
existing staysail and we hope to get it back next week, when we can try it all
out. If it's all okay we'll also have our storm jib converted. The second
project is having curtains made for the bimini so the cockpit is enclosed
and stays dry when it rains. They can only be used at anchor as when
up we can't use any of the winches or mainsheet - makes sailing a bit
difficult! We've had the first 'fitting' and we hope to get it completed
next week. Perhaps that's what's needed to get a decent dry
spell!
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