Some information for our English speaking followers
BRAINWAVE
Nicolas
Mon 26 Jul 2021 18:08
|
Hi all
People who follow us will also be english speaking. So
we try to give you, english speaking followers, some news from time to
time.
We started our journey last Sunday ou of
Amsterdam towards Brest. Some people take 10 days to get there but we are a
little bit in a hurry and decided to sail throught to Brest without stopping on
the way.
So it is night and day and we are still about
50 hours to go. We speed up as good as we can because this Friday there
will be quite strong winds blowing against us (over 40 knots).
This morning we had to cross some separation zones just
befor reaching Calais. We didn't really know but it is like Skyguide in Geneva.
Traffic control called us up on VHF and told us that we are in a place we should
not be (yes, we went against traffic in one of there highways; but as there was
not that much big tankers we thought it could pass; NO WAY, they told
us).
We also discover the strong currents in this area.
Sometimes we do 8 - 9 knots over ground and sometimes it is just 3 knots (when
the tide is working against us).
So we did it the conventional way and passed in a 90
degrees angle.
Later on we solved many problems like:
- communiation system that didn't realy work: Irwin, on
of the technical friends on board and Sue from mailasail took care of that and
it is now working well. Thanks to both of them
- laptop battery problems: again it was Irwin who could
solve this issue. But we had to stay close to the coast of England in order to
have 4G communication working
- our flag started to take an awkward angle: it just had
to be fixed again
- we took two reefs in the mainsail; it was a good test
and we saw that there is some procedure to respect (we have a furling boom on
our boat; so this is new to us and we still have to work on it)
- we were also talking about MOB (Man over board; or
should I say "gender in the water" to be socially correct)
- our security lamp didn't work on the security buoy; it
is solved now also as we found the missing peace in the things "one never knows
if you need them but don't want to throw it away"
Now we are following the coast of England as we
expect strong westerly winds. We are in a "sandwich position" between the
winds and the "traffic separation zones" where we, as you all know now, can't go
where the wind wants us to go. We will cope with that issue later on.
We still expect to be in Brest by Thursday
afternoon,
Wishing you all the best we will fight against wind,
waves, other boats and whatever comes up for us.
Take care
George |