Log Day 18 - busted

Global Yacht Racing's EH01
Global Yacht Racing - sponsors: Caspian Services
Thu 9 Dec 2010 02:54
1650 ships time (2050 GMT)
On board speed record updates in rough order:

Port Watch: 11.7kts, 13.3kts, 14.9kts, 15.2kts
Starboard Watch: 11.9kts, 13.7kts, 16.3kts

Its like tennis! advantage Port, deuce, advantage Starboard.....Roly just said we should email Beneteau and ask them "just how fast these big bastards are meant to go...if ya drop it off a building you could probably get it to go a little bit faster!"

I quite agree. Will went up the rig earlier, no mean feat in these conditIOns so we could fix the main halyard. We then hoisted to full main but kept the fractional kite up as the masthead looked a bit too much on the edge.

Ruder hum is fairly constant now as is the prepetual rolling making sleep a little hard, but fast is good.

2345 ships time
Bloody busy and fairly disastrous night.
We called for the gybe around watch change. This means dropping the kite so e can re run sheets and guys, check for chafe etc. Anyway the re hiost went pear shaped and we ended up witha horrendous wrap around the forestay. This took around an hour so sort but sort we did although we all chafed at the bit at the lost time.

Things where fairly stonking along after that with good cosnatnt speeds of 9 - 10 KTS until around an hour ago when the head blew off the kite completetly and it 'dropped itself'. Nice, thats 2 kites busted in as many days. So now we are on poled out jib until we send Will up the rig yet again to rcover the halyard and the triangle of cloth that remains as a flag at the top of the rig. Expensive and frustrating when you are chasing boats and only on dayt out from the finish.

Andy.