Midway - South Atlantic

CARANGO AMEL 54 #035
PETER and VICKY FORBES
Tue 31 Jan 2017 09:14
13:24.07S 23:21.19W

HALF WAY.

Carango ploughs remorselessly on across this mighty ocean. We have had good wind and not quite enough wind but it has been a good crossing thus far. At the start of this ocean we rigged the code zero sail poled out to starboard and sailed 'jib and jigger' at about 150 degrees off the wind on the port tack.

Then we had the block incident at night and when we had recovered the sail we re-rigged the pole with the yankee also on the starboard side. After the code zero dried out and we had re-rigged the block at the top of the mast we decided to try to goosewing the headsails adding the code zero ‘free flying’ on the port side - it worked well and this is the  rig that has carried now half way across the South Atlantic. We set the autopilot to steer ‘by the wind’ at about 175 port to keep the code zero full of wind. The US/Canadian element of this group call ‘goosewing’ ; ‘wing-on-wing’, so that along with Buoghey as the pronouncement of the word buoy is new vocab for us Brits.

 Wing -on wing! Code Zero and Yankee.

We have had a vigorous backgammon championship:

 Vicky is the current reigning Carango Champion at backgammon.

 Arthur has been a bit intellectual reading the `Speccie’. Note the delicious ST Helena bananas full of much needed potassium.