25 Nov - Day 9 Position at 16.26 hrs 21:59.5N 027:36.7W
Imagine Of Falmouth Online Log
Jon Constantine
Sun 25 Nov 2007 17:48
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Day 9 Distance to Antigua 1962 nm (nautical miles). Yippee! Less than 2000 miles to go and hopefully, the hard part is behind us. Today, we are trying to adjust to yesterday's time change of minus 2 hours. No, I'm afraid we didn't get an extra 2 hours in bed. The problem, is that we are pretty much living to daylight hours. Morning starts when it gets light and the day finishes when it gets dark. So yesterday, it got dark at about 4pm instead of 6pm. Cooking and eating the evening meal needs to be done and dusted before it gets dark or it's just too difficult as we don't run much light in the saloon after dark. I can't remember who suggested it to us but we bought several of those re-chargeable garden lights and they are great for night use. Not too bright so as to ruin night vision but just enough light to see where you are going. Very useful when the saloon is moving around all over the place and the floor is never where it should be. The weather today has been mainly sunny but with those clouds on the horizon to watch out for. We got confident today and put out the full genoa which is pretty big on a Feeling 39 and we have been doing 7.5kts, sometimes 8 and on one occassion I saw a 9.6 on the GPS. Now we really are eating up the miles. We made friends with another couple doing the Blue Water Rally who were opposite us in Calero on the pontoon. Mike and Amanda and their son Adam, on their boat Lowena. I helped them set up their mailasail email system (I think they are also doing a web log. Have a look at the mailasail website at www.mailasail.com and go to "web diaries" and then look for Lowena2 - you can also get to the Imagine web log from that page.) We keep in touch each day by email as we are the only 2 boats in the rally without SSB radio. They left Calero about an hour before us last Saturday but are now someway behind us (over a hundred miles I think). Their email today told us they had had some problems with a headsail in the night and had nearly lost it overboard. Sounds like Adam ended up with burnt hands trying to haul it back in. We will reef down the headsail tonight. Dramas are so much worse when they happen in the dark and far more dangerous too. Ah, I forgot to mention; the fish was delicious. We had half the tuna and half the other one which we now think might have been a skipjack according to an email from my brother. It was nicer than tuna, the flesh was quite pale and it just fell off the bone. Cooked in olive oil and garlic and served with boiled potatoes with butter and parsley. Sam's done a spag bog for tonight and then we'll have fish again tomorrow. Talking of fish, I went on deck today and found our first flying fish. They are supposed to be quite good to eat (according to Sam) but I think he had been there some time and in the heat he didn't look at all well. So; he has the distinction of being in today's photo - with me of course, because I caught him and I didn't even need a rod. That's it for today folks. Sorry it's late but it's all down to this time change malarkay.  Gotcha! |