The call centre in the sky

Caramor - sailing around the world
Franco Ferrero / Kath Mcnulty
Sat 2 Nov 2019 18:40
30:26.7S 174:28.6E

As David went off watch, he asked me to put in a request to Odin and Neptune for smooth seas, winds of 10 knots and a course of 162 degrees.

I made the call but it went through to voice message at some call centre, probably in India.

“Please hold. Your call is important to us. An adviser will be with you shortly.”

Still, someone up there must have been listening, we are flying along at five and a half knots, on course (162 degrees) with 15 knots of apparent wind.

Last night, after I finished writing the blog entry, as I said, I’d got Caramor sailing again. We were trotting along nicely, Aries was straight as a die and I was sitting proud. There was just one disconcerting fact; every 10 minutes or so we would luff (go into wind) and stall, just for a few seconds, then off we would go again. I couldn’t work it out. I checked sails, checked Aries, he looked happy, straight as a sentinel. We sailed like this for well over an hour. Then, on the next luff, instead of everything going back to normal, we went through the wind - clang, bang, everything swings over and the genoa is backed. Down below up becomes down and vice versa and poor Dave is falling out of the bunk.

When we motor, we lock Aries off with a pin. I’d forgotten to remove it when we started sailing again so Aries wasn’t doing anything. Well balanced little Caramor had been steering herself!

It gave Dave a laugh: “Did you think Aries was pleased to see you?” The truth is I did, I thought we made a great team.