Day7 - 24hr run - 205nm
Freespirit
Sun 3 Dec 2006 16:26
 Day 7 celebrations
We opened our first bottle of champagne
at lunch today. Celebration 7 days at sea, passing the 1000nm mark and
clocking a daily run of 205nm. The trades are simply doing their trade
wind thing and blowing, pretty much incessantly at 20 knots from behind and
giving us a satisfying ride across. We are hoping this will stay as it it
for at least the next 3 days, if not for longer, and we are eating up the
miles. We also passed the first major waypoint at 20N 30W which has been
in our sights for a couple of days now.
There is some cloud cover some of the
time but mostly it is hot and sunny. The waves are building up but
lengthening so we are not being shoved around quite so much. It is still
hard to cook at the moment but we are managing OK. Colin cooked up Danny
Dorado for an appetiser before lunch which was delicious. We have not been
able to fish for 48 hours because we could not land anything in these seas and I
doubt very much that we could slow the boat down sufficiently to reel it
in.
Bit of a drama with the genoa this
morning as we were doing our morning rig checks. We furled it to move some
of the lines that had been chafing overnight but it became twisted and would not
unfurl again afterwards. We took it down and re-wound it on the luffline
down below - it is quite a lot longer than the boat and so we had blue and white
sail covering everything in 4 cabins and the cockpit from the bow to the
transom....messy! We did however, get it back up again with a lot of
huffing and puffing from various crew members and both headsails are now pulling
us along at our (now) customary 8 knots+. Everyone is asleep (at 1630 in
the afternoon) but we are all looking forward to watching Saving Private Ryan at
1900 at our Sunday cinema.
I am still a bit hacked off with myself
for not thinking through these bizarre racing instructions a little more
carefully. Essentially, what has happened is that we were routed south on
the basis of a wind advantage that has not turned out to be much of a
differential anyway. Most of the rest of the cruising fleet simply took a
straight line for St Lucia on the basis that they could motor if the wind
dropped - which is exactly what the majority of them did. We ended up
going c.250nm out of our way (and have not used our engine at all) but I doubt
very much if the penalty system for using the engine gives us anything like the
full compensation for the detour. So, unfortunately, we are playing catch
up having given most of the fleet a 200 mile head start! Not very smart I
know, but I am not used to races where the engine can be used to over-ride the
wind strategy! And I trusted my weather man.....next time I will know
better! Anyway, having done 8-9
knots for nearly 36 hours we are hoping to see a bit of progression on the
positions today. If not, it is back to the drawing board.
That's all for now.
|