Wednesday 7th June
Awelina of Sweden
James Collier
Wed 7 Jun 2017 14:36
The wind has drawn into the SW and increased a bit to F5 to 6, as expected, and we’re moving well at around 7.5 knots on a broad reach on port tack. We were on starboard tack until about midnight when the wind backed and increased so we reefed and then gybed. Gybing the main was straightforward enough but gybing the yankee, which was poled out, was more of a palaver and in fact the whole operation took about an hour, rather disrupting the watch patterns (the boom preventer, the running backstays, the lazy sheets and guy for the yankee and the fore and aft guys for the yankee pole have to be rigged and put on and taken off winches in exactly the right order - an enormous and complicated bit of embroidery but hampered by wearing a harness and lifeline while in the dark while being shaken around and doused with spray). But all was ok in the end and nothing broken.
This wind should, according to forecasts from the UK and from France, hold steady for the next 48 hours or so by which time if all goes well we should be at the Lizard, still 295 miles away. Before that we have to come into continental waters at Sole bank, which should be around dawn tomorrow.