What a Difference a Day Makes - 6th May
Vega
Hugh and Annie
Sat 6 May 2017 21:05
Overnight our sailing conditions went downhill and we had a choppy sea and light wind. As a result we had little quality sleep, despite the new watch routine. With the wind oscillating between ENE and ESE we couldn't steer down the rhumb line (direct route) and had to gybe twice. Today started with heavy cloud on the horizon so we motored for an hour to charge the batteries (not enough sailing speed for the Duogen and moonlight has no impact on the solar panel) and to see how the wind developed before raising the cruising chute. What appeared to be a front of low thick cloud enveloped us and the wind rose to 17kts as the rain came down. At least the wind set from the SE so we made some progress in the right direction. As it brightens up the wind is dropping............I wrote too soon. We put the cruising chute up and struggled to get it to fill in the 4kts of wind. Just as we succeeded, bang, 20kts of wind hit us and we rushed up to 7.5kts, the boat rounding up into the wind. We could have hung on and hand steered to go with the gusts but it would have been a roller coaster ride. Great fun but not prepared to risk any gear breakage our here. We are nudging 6kts under just the genoa at the moment.
We are now down to three quarters of a large squash, onions and some garlic. We have tried squash curry, squash risotto, roast squash with fish cakes (delicious, thank God for the instant mash) and are about to make squash soup for lunch. Somewhere we have a copy of 1001 ways to cook squash. Oh, and we did find an apple this morning that cheered us up. The new fishing lure is towing behind but at our speed it will have to be a pretty dozy mahi mahi or tuna that takes it. Let's hope there is one out there or it's more squash for supper.
Now we have just 800 miles to go. If this wind keeps up that is less than a week. All the inter yacht exchanges are becoming a countdown to arrival in the Marquesas.
