Day 12 Position 14:19.5N 44:23.05W We have a utility room....
Gwenhyfar's Travels
Peter
Fri 6 Dec 2019 17:00
The Funny sail which gave us such noble performance up front whilst the
green spinnaker was sent to the sail makers locker (aka aft poop deck) for
repair, was lowered and stowed. In its place we nervously prepared the lime
green kite - complete with its yellow patch of glued and stitched repair.
Jan looked on nervously as his handiwork was committed to fly the sky
tethered to the foredeck and spinnaker pole. The breeze opened the little
spinnaker gracefully. The first gust came.... she billowed and swung, but
the repair was good. Joy all round!
The wave train is now a more stable suburban bungalow size as we make steady
westward progress.
Simon serves cold gazpacho soup, a popular choice in this heat. Afternoon
tea was served with an Italian panetonne - very seasonal and festive.
As we head west so we are chasing the sunset and every 15' of westerly
longtitude we make equals an hour of "lost time" on London. So we are now at
44.36W (as I write) and therefore in daylight terms we are very nearly 3
hours behind London. Of course there is no Time Zone in the Mid- Atlantic
where we are, and we can do as we like in our own little ship. We have made
our decision to change our ships clock back 2 hours to follow natural light
and so all our routines are carried out at the right time for our body
clocks - Lunch after midday sundowner at 17.30 hrs. If we didn't adjust our
ships clock sundowners would now be 3 hours after dark ... and breakfast
would be at 11.00 hrs! All of this goes to explain why it is that the ships
blog that we are sending out is getting later in the afternoon as we
progress west. St Lucia is -4 hrs UTC , and so we have one more ships hour
to go back, maybe around tomorrow lunchtime and then the last 1 hr we shall
adjust as we arrive in St Lucia.
Sundowners after we have changed the sail plan down a gear to poled out jib
and reefed main. The Green sail is packed away for a quiet night. Supper is
Simons Bolognese part 2. Cunningly he had made a very large portion 5 days
ago, and froze the excess making today's job much simpler. Very efficient
and enterprising.
As we have previously described, Gwenhyfar is a slim ship and whilst she has
an overall length of 63 feet her storage space is somewhat limited and every
little space is at a premium. Organisation is the key. Peter maintains a
little black book which cross references all the items on board. We have
"day food" locker, 3 fridges (one is a deep freeze), and dry store for
sweets and goodies in the saloon. The cockpit has a locker to starboard -
where we keep all the safety gear - first aid, flares, grab bags, harnesses.
The locker to port is very deep and is a hobbit like walk -in room. Forward
of this space is our washing machine. Then we have racks of stacked and
numbered boxes. Alpha boxes are for food and galley household. They contain
long term items, such as pasta, ,rice, tea bags. The boxes are labeled
A,B,C,D,E and so on and cross referenced in the Black Book. Chandlery items,
pumps, engineering spares, filters etc., are stored in numeric boxes,
1,2,3,4,5, etc. Next to the washing machine is the rack of tool boxes- Bag 1
has regular tools Bag 2 has emergency and specialist tools like angle
grinders, and rig cutters. In the rudder room is our "shed" where we have
stored useful pieces of wood, battens and piping for emergency use. We plan
to never use these!
Usually at around coffee time "Mother" discusses the menu of the day with
the Purser and the necessary stores are requisitioned from long term
"Utility room" store and the black book is debited. Occasionally specialist
items are requested. The other day we needed a neoprene gaiter for the
rudder and some contact glue. "That will be Utility room box number 3", says
Peter.
We are currently racing along with the repaired kite continuing to pull us
along at 9-10 knots with the occasional downwind surf at 12-14 knots.
Today's helming record is 15.6 knots held by Peter, who now moves into a
Silver medal position, at 11.45 hrs this morning.
Days run was 195 miles
Gwenhyfar
Out