What a difference a day makes!
Mustique
Fin McGurran
Fri 21 Sep 2007 07:56
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Biscay, ahh Biscay !!
Long gentle rollers, no wind and engine on - for
the last 20 hours!
Once we got into Biscay yesterday morning, we
noticed that the wind had started to drop off, to around 14knots, but still on
the nose. During the early part of the morning, the wind dropped again, to
only 2 or 3 knots - so the engine had to go on and has ben on ever since.
At least it gave us all a chance to dry out and dry out the boat
some-what. Major discovery yesterday is that we have a leaking deck hatch
- above my bunk!! Not good at all! Although I do not use that bunk
at sea (it the forepeak and a bit too bouncy to sleep in at sea), the bunk
cushions were soaked, and worse still, all my clothes that were in the stowage
below the bunk. This called for action, and forced me to break one of my
"boat promises" and use Gaffer tape, the horrible stuff. So, we the dek
hatch now sealed shut forever, the next few jobs of the day for myself and crew
were maintainence tasks - leathering halyards, making chafe preventing pads,
making spectra loops, etc. This took up most of the on watch time yesterday, we
the off watch listening to the Volvo Vocals (a nice and consistent (although
loud) tune that the engine makes - guaranteed to get me off to sleep in no
time).
Today has started pretty much the same way.
We are now 108 miles from the North Coast of Spain and about 160 miles from
rounding the corner. Engine is still on and still no wind, but I do expect
the wind to fill in again about 11am and as we still have at least another 27hrs
of Biscay ahead of us, it will be welcome.
Fin
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