Getting warmer
Neroli
Charles Tongue
Tue 25 Nov 2008 16:28
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25:25.70N
18:22.00W
Getting
warmer............
Progress has
slowed since the start of the ARC on Sunday but at the moment we are on a course
of 230 at a speed of 4kn with our spinnaker up. We covered 137 nautical miles
(nm) in our first 24 hours but only 102 nm in the 24hr to 1200 GMT today. As we
were taking our spinnaker down yesterday evening, just before nightfall, a
Bowman 48 ,Adastra of Yar' (Bob Tabor, RYS) pased close across our stern which
gave us encouragement. The wind went very light in the early hours of the
morning and we heard on the SSB radio that many yachts have been motoring. At
night we could see the lights of about eight yachts, a myriad of stars and, in
the early hours of the morning, the tiny slither of a moon rose from the sea.
Today has been sunny and it is definately getting warmer although we
can now only see one other yacht.
The positions as at midday yesterday, reported this morning from the
ARC office on the Isle of Wight, put us in a very encouraging position ahead of
many larger yachts and with 2,582 miles to go.
Life on board
is settling into a routine after the excitement of the start. We work a rolling
watch system with four hours on in the day and three at night. Each watch
overlaps for one hour at the beginning and one hour at the end with the
watchkeeper before and after. It sounds confusing but works well
and means that each watchkeeper only does one hour alone at night and two in the
day. We are laden down with food and are eating like tigers! Charlie and Graham
are preparing dinner tonight and it will be steak, mashed potatoes and
ratatouille. The temperature is very pleasant and we are wearing T shirts
and shorts with a light fleece at night. At the moment all our 'systems' are
working well. The SSB radio has been used succesfully to make contact and
receive info from other boats and we are sending these daily diary entries via
the sat phone. Because we have frozen a fair amount of food we
are consuming a lot of electricity and have to charge our batteries early
and late. Before we left the UK we agreed that each of us would bring three
treats for the other members of the crew and Henry gave us our first treat
today. Charlie has an Airfix model of HMS Victory to paint and assemble; Lou and
Graham have fighter aircraft! The end results are to be judged by a panel of
three experts - Granny Elsie, Francoise and little Charlie. More excitement
today as we received our first emails from home and Graham opened a lovely
picture drawn by Minty!
The mental
health of Henry, one of our crew members, is causing some concern. He has been
running courses for the rest of the crew on Rap, Techno, House and heavy metal
which are apparantly types of 'music' and has now started a course on guilt
management which concerned our chief medical officer. More worrying he has
just announced that he thinks he will go for a walk this afternoon. When Lou
asked what sort of a walk he answered 'a coastal walk'.
1600
25.11.08
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