Day 2 - Squalls - Reefs - Under the weather
Bonkers
Donald Macdonald
Sun 22 Oct 2023 18:22
The last 24 hours have been quite challenging with a sloppy sea at times and the motionputting me a little under par, not sick though and John has had it less. Overnight we crossed the ships obliquely both east and west so a lot of checkingwithout a problem. One ship did call this morning to ask our intentions. Biggest vessel problem this morning was a fishing vessel doing ovals and trying to miss him.
Weather has had frequent showers with the associated wind increases. About half the time we have a a reef in or 3 a couple times. Lots of arm exercises on the coach roof winches. The 2 new Pontos winches for the jib/genoa are excellent with the 3 gears the last gear very easy to bring in the sheets. You do have to watch what you are doing as easily oversheet into the spreaders. We do often get less than 5-6 knots so the engine gets brought into operation to try and stay on the routing plan so we hopefully only see the wind and waves forecast and not a little late at point about 100 miles from top corner of Spain.
Maintenance today has been tightening up top rudder bearing housing in aft area. Replace lost ring pin on mainsheet. When seas permit tighten up a inner forestay plate which looks like could be letting some water in the forecabin.
Presently we are doing 4 hour watches 0600-1800 and 3 hours overnight.
Dinner this evening Chicken and vegetable soup, cheese, couple rounds of bread then tinned pears.