LOG DAY 5 - on the rum route
Jusdoit5
Thu 6 Dec 2012 10:38
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Saturday 1st December -
Sunday 2nd December 2012 Position @ 1200hrsGMT - 2.12.12 ; 20' 39 N, 029'
38' W
miles in last 25 hours; 210
Ian, Annie and Frank see in the dawn with a bottle
of Rose Cava to celebrate Ian and Annie's wedding anniversary. It's still quite
cloudy after a squally night but a beautiful morning nevertheless. Crew (most!)
helmed all night due to the malunction of the autohelm on starboard and the
squally conditions. Gusts up to 35 knots - quite constant at 30 for most of the
night. We see 2 yachts, one heading south and one which we overtake to
starboard. A cargo ship also passes to stern en route to St Petersburg. The
clouds clear throughout the morning and we soon have a sunny blue sky, now in
the trade winds with the familiar puffy white clouds. We hook 2 fish this
morning but still fail to land any....probably going too fast. We continue on a
course of 310'/320' and have a relaxing day in the sun. At approximately 1700hrs
GMT we decide to gibe south as the wind has veered round to a more easterly
direction. We're delighted as we now appear to be almost bang on the rum line
for St Lucia. During the gibe the fishing line gets caught round the rudder so
there is much amusement for the rest of the crew over the next half hour or so
as boys will be boys Ronnie and Frank (Mc Phail and Sunny Jim) try to
retrieve it - eventually successfully. We're now on a steady 8/10 knots on
a course of 280' magnetic.
The sun comes out again and the crew has a wee celebration - 2000 miles to
go. Later, Ronnie puts on the generator which immediately fails se we run
the engine all night to maintain some of the charge in the batteries. We
continue on our course throughoiut the night - a clear moonlight with shooting
stars all around. Hallelujiah! In the morning the crew awaken to find that the
determination of McPhail and Sunny Jim has won the day again - the generator is
fixed. Another plus - we've landed our first fish - of the flying
variety! |