Spindrift ARC Log - Day 6
Austins' Travels
Chris & Lynn Austin
Fri 25 Nov 2011 17:54
After a slow start to yesterday evening with lighter winds, the wind picked
up overnight to 20 knots gusting up to 30 knots from the East and we reefed
the headsail and spent most of the night averaging about 7 knots on a broad
reach towards the Cape Verde Islands - nice sailing. We saw no ships or yachts at all last night.
By daybreak this had
settled to 15-20 knots but we were still making 6 - 7 knots. We have reached
the waypoint at which we would expect to turn west but the big question is
'when will we pick up the reliable trade winds'. We know that we have to go
south far enough but don't know with the current weather conditions quite
how far south this will be and we now have only 10-12 knots and the wind is
quite variable.
We decided to hedge our bets and go southwest for another day and see how
the weather looks.
We succeeded in listening to the short wave communications amongst the ARC
fleet on our SSB short wave receiver(similar to a 'ham' radio) for the first
time. This is useful because they repeat the weather in case we have a
failure of email through our satellite phone. The sat phone is working well
and we can send emails as well as call. We get daily weather reports via
email - not that we can do much except deal with it - there aren't any
harbours too close to us!!!
We also addressed a problem with the diesel generator that developed
yesterday - it was leaking oil and luckily we noticed and switched off. To
get at it means emptying its locker which is on the aft deck, as it is
buried under lots of other stores and equipment (all available areas are
fully used for storage).
A real team effort was required to pass everything from the aft deck into
the cockpit and then investigate and solve the problem. We hope we have
fixed it and it seems to be running OK now. However, we will have to clean
all the bilges of the oil during the next day or so.
We ran the watermaker until the tanks are full so we have enough water now
to get to St Lucia at a stretch.
We had a big fish on the line but it managed to escape with the hooks and
part of the lure -
probably a good thing as landing it may have been difficult. With the full
brake on the reel it was still running out the line, so I was happy to only
lose the hooks. I just hope we don't loose any more lures/hooks or we won't
be fishing any more. Still no fresh fish for dinner.
Overall we are in good shape and everyone is sleeping better and adjusted to
life on board. We have wind, no injuries or serious damage, water, power,
good food are happy and it is getter warmer. I (Chris A) seem to be recovered from the initial seasickness and am functioning normally (that's why there were no blog updates until day 3 and why they are getting longer - I can sit at the chart table and use the computer without wanting to lie down or rush outside.
We are just celebrating our arrival at the southerly waypoint at 1530 with a
gin and tonic all round! Dinner tonight is risotto.