Halcyon Day 17 - Swim Time and Independence for Finland
Halcyon
Rob Withers
Tue 6 Dec 2011 18:23
The long-expected hole in the wind appeared today. We made good
progress using the diminishing efforts of the trade winds yesterday.
During the night there were a number of squalls to keep us on our toes,
before the wind veered from E to S and faded. During the morning we
made good progress reaching and then close hauled but it continued to
veer and fade so that even with our secret-weapon of a really big
lightweight genoa made for light winds we were making only 3 knots,
with only 2 of them towards St Lucia.
We therefore decided to go swimming. The water was beautiful and it
was a real morale boost to set against the prospect of either 2 days
motoring or 4 days slopping around at low speed. We all went in, and
did a quick tour before getting on-board and starting the engine.
We have been chatting to the Finnish yacht 'Susanne', who we have been
close to before . We had both been congratulating ourselves for not
motoring so far - and then agreed at about the same time that it was
a fruitless struggle. They were celebrating Independence Day in Finland
by making the Swede on board do all the chores and treating us to their
national anthem over the VHF. There is another, unknown yacht we can
see nearby who is proably tut-tutting about abuse of R/T protocol.
