Little Pea's ARC Blogoramma 9 - Wind shifts and wind holes.
Littlepea
Fri 7 Dec 2012 22:10
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18:53.1N 45:37.8W
We awoke exhausted after the havoc of the previous
night to the great news that we had made some serious gains inspite of the foul
conditions. Spirits were quickly raised as we knew we were going to be in for an
easier time as the weather was due to ease off. Much of the day was spent trying
to keep our pace up and then in the afternoon the inevitable happened: under a
massive black cloud we had a 140degree windshift bringing all hands on deck to
cope to settle Pea down to the new conditions. During this time the heavens
opened. The biggest rain storm yet (and we've had some big ones) poured down.
However, it was not all bad news, this was the first big rain storm we'd had
during daylight. We took this opportunity to strip off and lather up in
some shower gel and shampoo. We were going to post some pics but thought we may
get banned from the blog site! We were refreshed and ready for what looked like
would be a very different 2nd half to this race.
As night fell so did the wind and we were left with
less than 6knots right up the chuff. We witnessed one of most impressive sunsets
I've ever seen, lighting up the sky and the wide variety of clouds changing
through all the colours down the red end of the colour spectrum before fading
into the darkness. As we're in the ARC cruising division, we're allowed to uses
our engines but incur a penalty for doing so. So, we 'spanked the iron donkey'
(Kevin - don't google this 'term', you may not find what you're looking
for...) for the first time since race start and motored west in search of some
wind. After a distressing night of false hope when little pockets of breeze
teased us then disappeared, we finally found some steady winds at 8am when we
stop the engine and carried on under sail.
Picture in advent calendar = We think this one was
actually a dog poo
Max Boat speed = Nothing high enough to
note
Number of Reefs = Niente
Maximum Gust = Not enough
Number of Flying Fish = More than yesterday, with 3
landing on the deck. Very smelly little things.
Number of Whales = 0
Amount of Rain = Enough for 4 very smelly guys to
wash themselves and come out smelling of roses
Jags, Mike, Minkey and
Ben |