Tuesday 28 June

Bojangles
Carla and Richard
Wed 29 Jun 2011 02:18
I did not get off to a very good start today, mostly because I got even less sleep than usual through the night. Even the dolphin display at breaklfast time did not manage to cheer me up, it did however provide me with much needed footage for my very own 'Blue Planet'!
 
Throughout the day the wind was NW 15 to 20 knots. The forecast for tomorrow was for much lighter winds and so we decided it would be a good idea to get the spinnakers out. After some technical issues (mostly not as a result of our own handy work but problems with the spinnakers themselves), 2 hours and raising the spinnakers 3 times we finally had something that vaguely worked!  In fact we were hooning along at 8 to 10 knots and helming was quite fun at these speeds although quite hard work, so Dad and I rotated on the helm every hour.  We are still experiencing some problems with the autohelm and so we are unable to use it with spinnakers, this means that we both have to be up whilst we use them.  By 3.00pm we decided to take it down so we could get some sleep.  The wind was at this point 18 - 22 knots and so we were able to maintain a reasonable speed of on average 7 knots.
 
It is now 3.12 i.e. very late on Tuesday night and our position is 49:20N and 7:56W. Our COG is 070 as is our bearing to Lands End. The wind is averaging 17 knots and is NW.