Transat Day 11 - 4th December 2008 - close encounters
Position: 16:49:30N 34:12:40W Transat Day 11 Today’s fun and games have included
dismantling the Aries (the boys), baking cakes (the girls), and seeing a couple
of other yachts. The wonders of technology – I
emailed Dad & Sarah to get me an email contact for Aries, and within an
hour, both had responded with information.
An hour later, I had the daughter of the Aries designer give me her
expert views on our problems.
Pretty impressive really.
Anyway, to sort out the issue with the blade kicking up required me to
lie with my body hanging over the stern of Nutmeg whilst I unscrewed the
blade. The wate is very blue and
very warm – but I am not tempted to swim!
Once aboard it was clear that there was some damage to the sleeve, and I
managed to replace the sleeve with a suitable spare, and re-fit the blade. So at least it now has no play in
it. Unfortunately it still won’t
hold a course, but we have eliminated one fault and are awaiting further advice
from Aries. Whilst Rob and I were doing this,
Sally and Pam decided to bake a cake, and created a very successful pineapple
upside-down cake based on the well-used Tana Ramsay orange sponge recipe (it’s
the one with E & J’s mucky fingerprints all over the page). It is very amusing watching Pam cook,
because now and again she misinterprets a European ingredient – tonight she put
Garam Masala into something that needed marsala wine… It was very tasty. In the afternoon, we converged with
“Chandelle”, an Ovni 435 who was on starboard, heading slightly north of west
while we continue slightly south of west.
We spoke on the radio – they were French Canadians, just two of them plus
their two cats, and they were baking bread while we were baking cakes. We took photos of each other. This morning, the same thing happened –
a non-ARC boat called “Mowana” – a French Feeling 39 heading towards an island
near It’s starting to get a bit
squally. Two boats have reported
50+ kts of wind in squalls about 60M to the NW of us. We had 18-20kts in patches during the
night. We need to refine our
reefing strategy because I am nervous about furling the 2 jibs round the furler
because of the extra strain it will put on it. I think we will drop the 2nd
jib at dusk so we are left with a simple sail plan. It is extremely humid and very
cloudy. Again, the night was pitch
black and it is difficult to even distinguish between sea and sky. It makes for very difficult steering as
you are effectively steering with your eyes closed. Just as I was doing the 1200 radio
net, we caught a fish! We only
threw the gear over for the fist time yesterday. It’s a lovely little dorade, all
yellow/green. Very pretty. Hopefully tasty too. Pam and Sally brought it in amidst
shrieks and giggles, and subdued it with a shot of vodka (finally managing to
use that vodka for something!!)
Then we caught something else, so heavy I couldn’t actually pull the line
in, but it got away. Hope all’s
well Ollie
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