600 miles to go - fish on holiday!
Juniper
John and Sally
Sat 5 Dec 2009 12:36
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17:08.468N 52:40.604W
Well about 600 miles to the Americas and we are
about to be passed by the C Columbus (cruise liner). You couldn't make that one
up!!
Slower 24 again but reasonably settled. Should have
kept our average above 6 kts with some good spinnaker time - just taken it down
as the wind got up to gusting 20kts.
We thought you might like an insight into night
watches. At first we ran 2 people on watch for 3 hours, off for 3 and then
repeat all night. Gave David and Guy time to build confidence. Later we moved to
single watches of 2 hours on and 6 off - much more civilised if you can
sleep.
The routine starts at 2100 ( I have kept the boat
on GMT but move meal times to suit light/dark) when first person takes over as
others clean up and prep for sleep. Coming on watch you hook a harness line on
in the cockpit before you sit down to enable you to get your bearings and night
vision (lifejacket and harness mandatory on Juniper at night). There then
follows a hand over brief from the previous watch of how we are doing, intended
course, wind conditions, visual contacts, squall activity and objectives of the
watch etc. After which it is your watch where we are contstantly amending the
autopilot course to make the optimum route to our next waypoint, trimming sails,
monitoring the radio (1 Mayday heard earlier in the trip), keeping a lookout for
other vessels ( nothing for more than a week until today)and watching for rain
showers, as they tend to increase the wind significantly plus monitoring
autopilot to ensure it does not fail flying down a wave at 10kts (it has
switched itself off 4 times so far which according to the makers is caused by a
spike in the electrical supply as a fridge/freezer kicks in). Two hours can go
quickly when the wind is up but ipod time when the winds goes away.
At the end of your stint its off to the bunk (with
the rolling looks like everyone is drunk!) in the bunk, wedge yourself in and
try and sleep........
During the day we run a relaxed watch which has
worked well, people getting shut eye as and when plus the cooking cleaning
etc.
Hoping for a bit more wind over the next two days.
Until then the computers says 1100 on the 9th - but who knows.
John, Jonathan, Guy,
David
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