Sunday after lunch
Moonshine
Sun 3 Dec 2006 15:58
Those of you that read yesterdays diary entry may have gathered from the heading that it was not really a diary writing day. You would be right! we had a brilliant,but dry mouthed sailing day. Big seas, and 25 knots of wind. Not rough, and not dangerous, just big, and fast. At one point this poor little boat surfed down a wave at 10.9 knots. It's probably never done
that in its life before. At the moment, were averaging about 6.2 k, and have knocked over a day off our expected passage time. If I'd known it was going to be like this I would never have loaded up the boat with a half ton of fuel! We have used 1 gallon of the 10 gallons generator fuel, and only 4 of the 80 gallons of diesel.We only used the diesel because of the rig problem, which we think now, will probably hold. We can't dump it, and dragging half a ton to the Carribean (where it is much cheaper) slows us by half a day! The wind may drop yet!
We had a computor problem yesterday. The world has changed! I telephoned Catherine (daughter) on my satphone (Atlantic) to her mobile (pub? didn't ask) Catherine went to computor in my office. Emailed me instructions for putting right (click this, right click that, delete this, uninstall that, reboot etc.) a page of it. We printed it on the boat printer (boat printer!), Dave read instructions, I followed them not knowing what I was doing, and it all worked again. Joshua Slocum would have been proud.
This has nothing to do with sailing. - we live in a sick world.
Our current position (3 p.m.) is 21.09N 29.51W and I think we are still doing well.
We can tell we are moving west. We have had to adjust the shift times to start at 10 p.m. your time - moved them on 2 hours - it was cruel to send the first sleeper to bed in the sunshine.
We had another sailing boat - Osprey 131, a Moody 47 - cross our course today. No, really cross our course. He passed about 100 yards (92.25 metres to comply with EEC rules) behind us. The first we've seen for a while.
We chatted for a while on the radio whilst we were both disappearing over our respective horizons. It never occurred to me to ask why he had such a different course to us - or him to ask me. This will worry me again later. I'm still convinced that the instruments on this boat actually like me, and only say what they think will make me happy. They are all connected together, speak to each other and decide between them what to say, - His probably do the same.
I'll tell you tomorrow about the flying fish, starry nights, warm sunshine, shooting stars,and the panic when a dozen bottles of tonic went missing.
All the best Rod,Dave, and Alun
SY Moonshine
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