Subject: AO day 13

Nov 30 2013
Rain, rain and rain.  Sea 1.5m, 10-12 knots easterly.  Course 194, sog 5.5

I write this just after having started my midnight to 3 shift, we are trying to get South, windman tells us to expect westerlies below 15 north,Easterlies above, grib tells me its east everywhere so nothing to lose and decided to put our money on weatherman.  Currently sailing SSE direction, err that'll be backwards then but it's the best we can do with south in it.  Alternative is bashing to windward nw into the low pressure for 3 days then bashing back out of it again for another 3, we had 4 hours or so of that yesterday and it is not comfortable. Cats float up and over every wave so it gets really hobby horsey going to windward, mono's can slice nicely through the waves ( but of course also healing at 35degrees).  Getting really annoyed with the wind shifts, the alarm, it goes at least every ten minutes.  Have been studying pilot charts, chance of these conditions in november based on the last 20 years observations, virtually nil.

9am the wind switched from overnight southerly to westerly again.

Gmt, ok i'm wrong.  The clocks go backwards as you go east, but who cares, time is just a number, nightwatch is dark, daywatch is light.

Aranya's turn for a dorado yesterday, so (not counting the flying fish) that just leaves Brian.  I'm thinking about putting out my other huge lure, like the one the big bitie thing stole a couple of days back.

The mainsail outhaul broke but thank goodness I left a mouse line through the boom so it took any an hour or so to change it.

Sitting at dinner we heard a metallic clunk, something fell from the rigging.  Investigation revealed the nut off the gooseneck pin had worked loose and fallen off, the pin was being hauled out by the mainsail and was already half way out when I got there about a minute later.  Thank god it happened in light wind and that we heard it go, 2 hours earlier we had 15 knots on the nose and the decks were awash crashing to windward. Takes me down a peg or two, clearly there are other important nuts aboard.

Drifter buoy deployment, passed 35 west overnight so dropped it over this morning.  It was peeing with rain, blowing westerly 16 we got all kitted up, Brian had the camera out.  So we were ready but instantly the wind decided 27 was a better speed and rain decided there were too many air gaps so quadrupled in volume, drop everything,reef sails and delay deployment by a few minutes until everything calmed down.  Eventually at 10:11 on 30 nov 2012 at 15.13.775n 035.31.927 over she went 118407 drifting in a badly behaving pond.