Spindrift ARC Log - Day 15
Austins' Travels
Chris & Lynn Austin
Sun 4 Dec 2011 16:36
and are now running with no mainsail and two headsails poled on opposite
sides - a bit like having two wings attached at the bows. One sail uses the
pole and the other sail attaches to the boom (that normally is used by the
main). These supports are needed to stop the sails collapsing in light winds
when the boat rolls. This rig seems more effective than using the main/genoa
combination and we are now making 5.5-6 knots in 15 knots of wind. This is
quite respectable after the last 24 hours when we we were wallowing and
changing sails, etc and we had our worst speeds so far. Due to light winds
the sea calmed down and the swell reduced from 2-3 metres to only about 1
metre with almost no waves on top, so it was a very calm, if a bit
frustrating, night. With the moon lighting the way and its reflection
showing a path across the sea it was quite serene. At about 0100 the wind
shifted and dropped even further and a very black menacing looking cloud was
catching up from astern. A feature of the trade wind belt and our current
weather forecasts is occasional squalls which are accompanied by black
clouds and a sudden dramatic increase in wind strength and gusts (e.g.
suddenly increasing to 40 knots) and preceded by light winds So we decided
to drop one of the headsails just in case. In fact the squall didn't
materialise but there was a change in the weather with the arrival of the
clouds and the wind recovered to a decent 15+ knots and has stayed at that
level for most of the time since.
The weather forecast is received from the ARC organisers by email through
our satellite phone linked to a PC, which is also how this blog is updated.
We use it for occasional email contact with all of our families but it is
limited due to very slow speed and high cost so we don't give the address to
anyone else as we need to avoid receiving non-essential emails and
especially any big attachments that would clog up our communications.
So with reasonable winds and a good rig we now seem to be back in business
and have (only!) 950 miles to go.
