Fai Tira Blog 16.00 UTC  Sunday 22th November

Fai Tira in mid Atlantic.   19 :54.22N 33:28.29W

Hi from below the 20^th Parallel.  Yes we have stopped heading south and have turned right to head directly for Antigua only 1300 miles to go.  As John said in the last blog the trade winds have truly kicked in at about 20 knots and we are zooming along at between 7 and 8 knots.  Denise the wind vain steering device is performing very well keeping FaI Tira on a fairly steady course despite the massive following seas. The ride is like being at Alton Towers on a roller coaster which never ends. Not everybody’s cup of tea but we love the exhilaration of it all. 

We are still at the front of the fleet although the larger boats are catching us up very quickly and considering they left 2 days after us gives you some idea of their speed.   We managed to travel 160 miles in the last 24 hours.  That’s an average of about 7 knots. We didn’t know we had bought an ocean racer.  Our sail configuration for downwind sailing is as follows.  We have the Main sail completely out on the leeward side protected by a jibe preventer.  We have the Genoa poled out supported with guys on the windward side and the Stay sail out on the leeward side.  This sail plan is working well for us and is a lot more stable than just using headsails or cruising shoots, which tend to get wrapped around the forestay, as we know!!!! 

The days seem to go by so quickly.  Although yesterday was a long day because we all put our clocks back by 2 hours at ten am.  We are now 2 hours behind UK time.  Our daily routine is basically this.  We wake up the off watch person at 07.00 and then grab a couple of hours rest.  The on watch person does the overnight checks as soon as it gets light.  This is to see if there has been any breakage or chaffing.  We then have breakfast at about 09.30am.  After breakfast it’s time for the 10.00 radio call where we give our positions and local weather to the allocated “net controller of the day”.  We then plot every boats position to see how close or how far the fleet is away from us.  For information we haven’t seen another boat of any kind for the last 5 days.  It’s a big ocean out here.  The nearest boat to us at the moment is Miss Tippy a 55ft Oyster with Brian, Sheila and their 3 kids on board and they are 27 miles away.   

After the radio call we settle down to some serious relaxing until it’s time to do some jobs.  Yes I clean the heads (toilet) and John cleans the fridge and makes bread, thinks about food up-dates his journal or reads.  About 14.00 we have a bottle of beer each which is our allowance for the day.  We then find something to eat and dose the afternoon away.  One of us always has to be on watch so we take it in turns to dose.  Evening arrives and we sometimes go and sit on the bow sprit which hangs right over the sea at the front of Fai Tira.  This is our Dolphin spotting platform.  After that we have our 18.00 radio call between the boats.  We are given the latest weather info and then the airways are open for chat.  Friday night is quiz night, and yes we didn’t do very well!!  After that its Chef John Fredrick’s time to conjuror up the evening meal.  Veggie food for him meaty something for me.  We have one small glass of wine with dinner and then it’s time to wash up and start the nights watch system of 5 hours on 5 hours off.  Then it all starts again the next day.

So now you know.  Why are we doing it you ask? Just to reiterate this is NOT a holiday it IS an adventure.

Perhaps I’ll ask John to try and explain this in the next blog.

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Bye for now.

Pete and John