Day One down
Mustique
Fin McGurran
Wed 19 Sep 2007 09:02
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Just how heavy is this boat? We have all
gotten used to her in race mode, when we limit the amount of "stuff" that is
carryed onboard - its been a long time since she did any extended cruising and I
had forgotten just how much stuff has to come onboard (we spend the last three
weeks loading it all). I knew that the boat looked lower in the water when
we were still at the marina, but its not until you come crashing off a wave that
it really becomes obvious that you are carrying a few more tons than
normal!
Its now 7am, and I am on watch and just taking a
break to write this. It has been a long night, with loads of shipping
around us. We had to join the traffic separation zone off Alderney
and this meant that we spend most of the night surrounded by huge 25knot
monsters - upto 30 to keep and eye on at a time. But, at least we are thru
it now and heading south west towards Brest, and daylight has just
broken!
The wind has been relatively kind all night -
albeit we have had it on the nose since we left the needles. We have been
able to keep both the full main and full genoa up all night.
Got on deck an hour or so ago, to be greeted by a
strange fishy smell - eventually tracked it down to a herring that had decided
it would be better off sailing than swimming! It had obviously been on
deck for some time and has left us a lot of his scales to try to get rid
off.
Sorry - just got back to PC (9am) - was called on
deck to see a pod of dolphins playing on the bow - about 20 of them. Then
the sea state changed and started to whip up - heralding a change to the wind
speed and direction - so a frantic 20 minutes or so, reefing sails, tacking and
getting very wet as waves kept breaking over us. The seems to be the
bottom of the low pressure system that is hitting the UK at the moment - will
try and go south later this morning to get out of it.
Catch u soon
F
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