Day 17 What we came for
Moondancer
Wed 10 Dec 2008 11:13
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We took the Puma down at sunset on Monday night ,
it was slightly overpowering the boat and sailed all night in 6 knots with poled
out genoa. At first light the big blue asymmetric went up and we reached nicely
all day. Covering over 160 miles in the 24 hour period. The wind then settled
back to 112 and moved slightly aft so out came Big Red for the next night. Our
first extended period with no significant lull.
The night sailing has been getting nicer, we set
off with a waning moon, and had the new moon about four days in. This meant that
while the stars were fantastic we had very dark nights. Since then the moon has
gradually filled until we are now about three days off full. This is now so
bright that foredeck work can be done at night with no lights. This is also a
big boost psychologically given that the nights are nearly 13 hours long. Where
we are now we have sundown at about 8.45 pm gmt and sunup at 9.20 am. We are
operating a system of four day watches and six night watches.
If you are interested our watch system, is somewhat
complicated but offers fantastic flexibility. Our
system is we have four hour day watches with someone coming on every three
hours, and three hour day watches with someone coming on every two hours! Best
explained by example.
I come on at 8 am ( first day watch) and join Alex
who is in the last hour of her watch.
At 9 am Alex goes off watch, I spend the next
two hours alone,
At 11 am Fiona comes on watch and joins
me
At 12 noon I go off watch and she spends the next
two hours alone.
At 2 pm she is joined by Andrew.
This rolls on into the night when you spend the
first and last hour with someone and the middle hour alone, alternate nights you
have one watch and the system rotates so the next you have two. What happens is
that if someone is particularly tired they can be let off watch when the next
person starts, or not woken for the first hour of their watch, or if there is a
lot going on, the person on watch does an extra hour so that there are always
two on. So far so good. To deal with the time change we put an extra night watch
in a week ago, and moved ships official night from 6 to 6 to 8 to
8.
Two days ago we saw a tanker the first other boat
we had seen for four days. We have heard nothing on the radio for five days, in
fact Alex thought we had switched it off to conserve power it was so quiet. We
have checked our ARC positions and see that we have been over 60 miles from the
next closest yacht, and yesterday, as we converge towards St Lucia that was down
to 45. So we hope to have company before too long.
Dinner last night was steak which is the last of
our fresh food. Tomorrow we will raid the M & S tins!
Also tomorrow, the 10th is Alex's birthday, and once again we have decided to
defer the proper celebration until our arrival.
We saw a whale in the distance today making one
leap, and then spent the rest of the day whale watching and seeing nothing, so
little photographically to report I shall just sign off with a shot off
yesterday's sunrise.
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