day2

Gaviota
Thu 30 Jul 2009 10:04
38:13.84N 08:28.74E
last 24 hours  (ie till 11.30 this am) did a staggering distance of ... 81 miles!!!!!! (3.4 knots average .. and thats rounding up!!!)
Well the wind yesterday morning didn`t last....  dropped and by 3pm was trickling along at about 2 knots in 5 knots or less on a broad reach... spinnaker still set as an assymetric.... Then for about 1.5 hours up came the wind to about 10 knots only to drop back steadily further till by 7pm I was down to about a knot in under 5 knots of wind... and still dying. In the end gave the spinnaker up as not enough wind to fill it and my speed actually increased to 1.1 knots!!!!!! (was about 0.9). well dark by now but lots of ships going round the southern end of sardinia so stayed on deck in tee shirt and shorts (not done that at night since the carribean) till 1 pm when at last - i saw no ships - but my now the speed had nearly doubled ...2knots whey hey!!!! During the night the wind came up quite nicely and in another couple of hours we were trecking along at 5 to 6 knots with only very minor tweeking. .....
Morning ... wind had dropped a bit and still very broad reach ... so had to decide ... spinnaker on the pole to windward or pole out the genny to leeward .... well given the boat speed  (4/5 knots) we were already doing didnt want to increase too much or will arrive at Bizerte in the middle of the night.... so went for the  - pole out the jenny option .... which worked fine... stopped the banging and slapping and a bit more speed.... until just now when the wind has shifted those few degrees to make it a dead run ... so genny doing nothing .... will leave it for a while, had lots of shifts like this yesterday.