Day 10 - Half way
Jacana
David Munro
Tue 20 Jan 2009 21:23
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The official halfway point was reached for Jacana
this afternoon, the midway point of the race. The moment was celebrated this
evening with a cocktail invented especially for the occassion called "The Flying
Fish", a slug of apple and cranberry nectar concentrate, water, squirt of lemon
juice and a shot of brandy. This went down very well with the crew and who are
scrabbling to find other landmarks within the race that may need
celebrating.
Jacana arose this morning still wearing her Big
Olive dressing gown - it's been one of those days where she hasn't really got
dressed all day and has been slobbing around the South Atlantic in a pair of
slippers and an Olive dressing gown. The wind is a steady trade of 11 to 15
knots from the south east, still directly from behind us, which ever gybe we
choose we are always 25 degrees high or low of the course.
The morning started as yesterday with a series of
squalls moving in a south westerly direction. Today a small one passed a few
miles to the north of us and we experienced a sleigh ride for 10 minutes as the
wind built upto 25 knots with the odd 27 knot gust. With David anticipating a
bang and cloud of shreds at any moment we kept big Olive up and rode out the
storm with everything made ready for a crash drop of the kite if things became
too much. We cruised along at 14 knots in a flat sea and pouring rain managing
to hold a good line - as soon as the wind had arrived, it had gone again,
leaving the rest of the day to relax and trim. The day saw us make one gybe late
afternoon, we are likely to stay on that gybe through the night.
Midway through the afternoon we came upon a racing
mark in the middle of the ocean, we quickly pulled out the race instructions
to see whether we should leave it to port or to starboard, no mention of it
in the instructions so we left it to starboard. If we got it wrong, we have
already done a 360 degree penalty turn last night courtsey of David and his
magic B&G wand!
Paul & Chris bought from England some reading
material to keep themselves occupied off watch. Chris's choice of reading matter
comprised a number of back issues of Yachting Monthly which he takes with him
when he retires to his bunk in order to commit to memory the entire used boat
section. Paul bought at the airport a pair of self
help books or self improvement books if you
prefer - the first "The New Earth" on spiritual awakening or enlightenment - how
to let go! Paul has let go so well that he has become
enlightened and threw it over the side and enlightened the boat at the same
time. Meanwhile his mental state has taken another twist and crazed doodles are
now appearing around the boat. These probably link to the dreams but we are not
sure. The attached photo shows a classic example.
We set sail from
Cape Town very well vittled, however after a few days we discovered that the
only salt we had onboard was a herbal variety giving everything the same herbal
taste - solution - our own sea salt pans. We have been making salt in the
cockpit using baking trays. Today we harvested our first batch see attached
picture. Also we have reached the end of our washing up liquid. Since our
partners will readily testify that washing up is not our secret passion it seems
there are only two possible causes. One is that John is tipping too much of it
over one of the eyes that carry the tackline down the coachroof and
which squeaks every time the kite takes load. The other (more likely) is
that Chris is secretly drinking it!
Crew of Jacana
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