08.42S 114.09W
JENNY
Alan Franklin/ Lynne Gane
Mon 17 Mar 2008 11:40
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We are currently speeding along at between 7 and 8
knts in a Westerly direction which is where we need to go,the sea is quite lumpy
and as we are running under twin head sails it is uncomfortably as the boat
moves a lot from side to side despite having a small amount of mainsail out to
try to steady the rolling effect.
Yesterday we had an invasion of flying fish they
were leaping (flying) out of the water in their hundreds one nearly ended in
Alan's ear(I suppose the fish oil may have done some good) another missed
Jenny's cheek by about 4 inches and we ended with about 7 on the deck.I don't
know whether you call a collection of flying fish a shoal or a
flight.
By the time we get to the Marquesa we will be a
stink boat(this term is normally reserved for motor cruisers) as yesterday our
watermaker packed up and we still have 10 days to go on passage.So washing is
out as we need to conserve the water that we have for drinking.
Despite having the facility (watermaker) on board
to turn sea water into drinking water we always have reserve water supplies just
in case (ever heard me use that _expression_),in this instance we are carrying
about 350 litres of water and as we have 4 people on board who could easily
under normal conditions use 20 litres per day each that will give us about
5 days supply,but as we are now on conserving water the consumption will drop to
about 20 litres per day total and leave a bit for showers every 3 or
so days.Jenny holds the record for the least amount of water used 2 litres I for
the most and I'm not saying.Washing up is done in salt water of which there is
no shortage and so is some of the cooking.We could also top up our fluid intake
with our beer stocks and soft drinks so I don't think we will
de-hydrate.
Jenny asked me a week or so ago why I made water
every day instead of letting it build up as it is a noisy procedure and I said
just in case, well just in case has arrived yet again.Hopefully we will
have it sorted out in Tahiti,the suppliers are working on it.
When you are at home and you send a parcel abroad
you don't really think about it and generally it arrives at its destination,when
you are in a boat abroad and expecting spares all manor of things go wrong but
mainly centred around officialdom and customs.Spares for vessels in transit
do not attract excise duty as do imported goods so therefore it should be a
straight forward transit through customs.So far on this trip boats have had to
wait 2 weeks for clearance, goods have been refused because of the wrong papers
or copies not originals and in one
incident the goods arrived and were lost in customs and have not turned up,it
happened to be a dinghy.So you can get the goods to the country but can you get
them to the boat?
Our problem will be getting the spares we need to
the boat the only sure way is for it to come with one of the crew changes or the
Blue water staff as excess baggage ,they are very good at that in fact
one is bringing a replacement gearbox out to our next stop for one of the
boats. Our problem is that we do not have
time in our stopovers for lengthy delays as the rally moves on.One boat ended up
coming across the Atlantic on their own arriving in Antigua one day and then had
to leave to keep up all because they had to wait for spares.
Today we saw our first boat 7 days it was about 3
nm away and flying a pink yes pink spinnaker so I called her up and had a
chat.Like everything in sailing there is a set procedure for calling another
vessel in sight using the VHF radio.They answered to me hailing them as
"Yacht with the Pink
spinnaker " and turned out to be from
the ARC another world yacht rally from the Uk but they are racing and we are
cruising but any more than two yachts....anyway they were about 5nm off and
couldn't see us but they being 72' long we could see their mast.It turned
out to be an Oyster 72 and the leading boat in the race so we had a little chat
and went ours ways.There was excitement at seeing another boat.
Well that's all for now
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