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25:54.890N
16:44.790W
The last 24 hours
have been hard work. During the night the wind speed reached 35 kts and we
had to reef the main in the dark - in fact two reefs. While this is not a major
problem, it's surprising how, as you round up towards the wind so you can part
lower the sail and tie the bottom of it to the boom, the apparent wind
increases. Most of the ARC is downwind sailing and that is why it departs from
the Canaries. At this time of the year the trade winds set towards the
west. When sailing downwind, the apparent wind speed appears to decrease as it
is the actual wind speed minus the boat speed. Of course when sailing in to
the wind it is the wind speed plus the boat speed. If the boat is doing 8 kts
the difference is 16 kts.......enough about the wind!
Sun rise this morning was beautiful and our
position at 12 noon UTC (GMT) was 23 degrees 56 minutes N and 18 degrees 00
minutes west. We have been going more south than many of the group but there is
a plan. The further south you go the better the trade winds set. Clearly this
has a time penalty as we are going a bit off track but the hope is that we
have better winds. This morning we spent a rather fractious two and a half
hours changing sails so we now have two headsails on the forestay and no main -
this will allow us to have more west in our course and be much closer to where
we should be. This configuration is easier to handle than a spinnaker and almost
(??) as good. It has smoothed the boat down and if we get strong winds it will
be easier to furl.
SSB radio log with Julian of Northern Child of St Peter Port at 14:00 GMT - and what a
reassuring conversation that is!!
So what's going on onboard? After the effort of the
past 12 hours everybody is relaxing a bit. The watch system is still in
operation but during the day it 'falls apart a bit. The skippers request is that
we don't use the auto pilot so we are going to steer the whole way! Pascal has
been doing sterling work on deck and he wants to say well done to Lucy for
the winning goal and he hopes that Celia is not hearing too many spooky noises
at night. We made radio contact with Northern Child as part of the radio link
and spoke to Pascal's son who is also doing the ARC on NC. Martyn
has been getting to grips with helming and Lizzy has been
cleaning the decks. Jackie and Ian have been doing a lot of the deck work (Ian
now feeling better - sea sickness) and I (Andrew) spend my time doing the blog,
radio, fixing stuff around the boat (no change there then!). As always we are
under the watchful eye of David and Tony - thanks guys. Love to Michelle and
Sally.
Very best wishes from GE to all family and
friends.
PS Best fruit cake in the Atlantic ever
xxx
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