16:58.02N 48:05.05W

Day 17 – Dec 7

The Great Nina Acronym Quiz

With around 800 miles to go to Rodney Bay, Nina and her stalwart crew are making steady progress in the tropical sunshine under reefed main and poled-out Genoa.

No doubt, back home, Christmas build-up is in full swing. But here on Planet Nina, not only is there 'not a mention'… we have also declared our own time zones, varying a half an hour a day as we go west. This is to maintain the same relative time for dawn watches, otherwise one half of the crew gets two long dark watches.

Speaking of sailing in the dark:, last night we came up with a special time-waster for our Facebook friends, particularly those who are hooked on sailing.

Nina has a superb suite of navigation equipment. A glance at same reveals a world of acronyms, mostly TLAs (Three Letter Acronymns) which are in the navigator's lexicon but probably nowhere else.

So to here is the Great Nina TLA Quiz. First to complete this unabbreviated in the comments wins a surprise from Rodney Bay!

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THE QUIZ

Now that St Lucia is less than 1,000 KTS away, we're starting to sail with a sharper eye to our BRG to WPT. We know that when we optimise this, our DTW will shrink as we focus on our ETA. We're checking that our CMG and DMG are optimised.

We're sailing well,

no need for RPM. So our DTE and TTE are technically infinite. This assumes that GWD and GWS stay within our comfortable BFT range, no squalls or nasty gusts!

Assuming our VMG equals our SOG, happy days! Otherwise it's all eyes on our COG, watching the XTE closely to make course corrections. TWD and TWS are all very well, but we'll be trimming sails to AWD and AWS if we want to optimise our TTG to WPT. With a well-balanced boat taking note of AWA and TWA, our ROT is good.

So we're having the LOLs here on Nina, munching on BLTs from the galley. Hey, what's that on the end of Mark's fishing line... WTF?!

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In other news…

A beautiful day. The swell had moderated as the wind slipped below 20 knots. Nina was pulling along with the reefed main from the night before, We joked about holding off unreefing of the main, as Nina was pulling so well on fully poled out Genoa. The fishing lines were rigged and out either side of the stern.

A cooked brunch was prepared by the new watch, Mark and Peter, as a bit of a rest from the galley by Frank, who had been doing such fantastic stuff over the previous days. All was good.

Mid afternoon we decide to perform a routine adjustment on the main sail which entails turning into wind. For safety sake we start the engine and commence the turn. A few seconds after engaging the sail drive we slip out of gear and Nina is in neutral with engine idling. Despite our best efforts we cannot engage drive and there is no response to the controls. Steve digs out the manuals and engine covers are removed by Peter and Mark. We don't need the engine to get to St Lucia but any manoeuvrings in Rodney Bay would be very difficult if we can't use it. After much study we find a means to stop the engine but then despite all investigation restart is impossible. So we don't have an engine or a means to engage the sail drive.

Various fault codes are discovered and it appears the control unit is not getting the power it needs. Reluctantly and with some angst we put the covers back on for the night and resolve to call the suppliers in the morning. With an unresolved problem, Peter and Mark in particular are not happy crew members during the night.

We continued sailing on into a very squally night. The broken engine tidied away, headlining replaced in stern cabin, engine covers put back on, and all the tools tidied away for the night.

Good job the main was not pulled up the mast. Both watches had to change the Genoa a few times, from poled out to Starboard, to a beam reach on the other side, and then back as the effects of the big black clouds, from sea level to right up into the heavens, dropping showers of rain and with winds doubling within a few hundred yards, made themselves increasingly apparent.

Tomorrow will be another day………