Day 11 - Sun shiny day
Jacana
David Munro
Wed 21 Jan 2009 20:57
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At last the sunshine has arrived and with it a hot
stuffy day, especially below decks. Jacana had an interesting night being chased
by squalls and then falling into a dead patch with next to no wind. The sails
and boom flopping back and forth soon became iritating but we managed to keep
the boat moving if not always in the direction we wanted. Olive stayed up for an
all nighter and is back on parade today. The winds began to fill in at first
light which is around 6.00am GMT and have built during the morning to a steady
18 knots allowing us to make good progress down the race course. We note that we
have had a leap up the leader board courtsey of "Oven Proof" who has now retired
with two broken rudders (very careless!!) and the fact that Voortrekker and
Impiana had a lie in this morning and didn't report their positions. We continue
to be the Southerly most boat on the course which is risky but may pay dividends
towards the final stages of the race.
During the morning it became necessary to drop
Olive for a while as we had gone through the outer casing of the light weight
sheets we had been using. The wear on sheets and haliyards is enormous and
requires vigilance to stop wear. David has taken most of the morning removing
the outer casing of the damaged sheets, taking out the damaged sections and then
replacing the casing before sewing it all back together. A painstaking operation
but very necessary in the event the winds drop again and the light weight sheets
are called for. see attached picture.
We are definately in a routine now with everyone
working at different times on watch. Each of us has a signature dish that we
prepare for supper each night, there is a general free for all at breakfast and
we tend to dress for lunch (Chris put's his T-shirt on). We each have showers
every other day and some members of the crew operate a Chinese laundry out of
the rear heads/shower room. (very good rates) The water we use is made on a
daily basis using a reverse osmosis water maker which takes about an hour to
generate 30 litres. We have emergency water supplies in the event the water
maker packs up, they are kept in 5 litre plastic containers. The water tanks
onboard we run dry only putting in what we might need for the day's consumption.
The advantage of doing this is to save weight, we don't want to haul gallons of
water around the South Atlantic if we help it. The water generation system works
well but has a human input element - always the weak link. Because we are
filling various containers, the clean water generated comes from a "wandering
hose" - if the designated water making crew member becomes distracted, the
container he is filling fills and then floods the bilges. Taken to
an extreme point could sink the boat. however it isn't weight efficient to drag
large quantities around in the bilges!
Many thanks to Nick our virtual doctor who has
identified the big black bird with flappy wings as a Giant Petrel, a member of
the Albatross family, however, he hasn't yet come up with a remedy for Paul's
little rash problem.
With the good weather we have had the opportunity
to relax a little more, Paul wishes to point out that he deserves a merit of the
day badge for managing to steer for 30 minutes without collapsing the kite. So
Paul gets to wear the party hat during supper tonight. Attached are a couple of
pictures.
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