8:21S 102:54W COG 235T COG 8-9 eseF4-5 DTW 2125nm
I delayed changing the sails for the very good navigational reason of it
being extremely rainy. Then BxWx sent me another forecast saying it was
gonna be rainy and cloudy most of the weekend, a bit better even further
south. Plus still not having worked out how to pull the sails down now the
rain had gone .. and then the wind got up, soo humm I decided to adopt on
of my most frequently-used offshore sailing strategies which I call "HOH!" ,
and which stands for " Hang On and Hope!". If the wind gets up even more -
say above 35knots- and you still have the big sails out due to, yerknow,
rainy, sleeping at the time, bit dark, everything jammed, or abject terror
on the part of self or crew, then this strategy can be further refined to
HOHUM - Hang On & Hope Using Motors - you wham on the motor(s) to go even
faster but the apparent wind reduces, and saves the sails from shredding.
From using HOHUM on at least two transats I can tell you that any crew who
were apprehensive about HOH aren't much attracted to HOHUM either, not in
the least little bit.
Last night we saw instantaneous max of 39knots of wind but not too bad
really. Anna was a bit concerned (she shouted "MET" from the helm while i'm
asleep on sofa, and i remember thinking ah, not me she's calling,
er...actually it must be me... and I got to the helm to help, and partly
reassure her, and i tolder, yerknow, don't worry, cos what's the worst that
can happen eh, ok so maybe Bang, we lose the sail, but so what? I hate the
gennaker anyway. Or, yeah, okay, so even the mast comes down, big deal,
we'll get a new one, don't worry. AND the liferaft is brand new, special
offshore PLUS model with enough biscuits for 6 people, so i bet it'll be
quite nice once inside. Not sure it all went down as well as it might, but
all fine enough now.
Oh, and I've stopped smoking. Yes, it's very good, three days now. Ok so
I've had a couple of cigs, well, five, but it's important to have the policy
in place, I reckon, and not get disheartened by nitpicky details like
smoking a cigarette or even a few.
A potential (possible speed-crazed lunatic) crew has asked me the hull
speed of Mojomo. Does anyone know? I said erm 10-11 knots, ish.
