AZAB Day 10 Tuesday 11th June - easy sailing
Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Tue 11 Jun 2019 20:17
An easy day today. I gybed everything over at some ungodly hour - think it was about 0300 - and we've been on port gybe ever since. Gybing is one almighty faff, starting with swapping the pole over, then the preventers, then the genoa, then the main, and finally the mizzen. I was a bit woozy at that time of the morning so I just sat on the deck with my headtorch on and thought it all through then did it a step at a time.
It has been a slow but lovely day - nice low swell going with us, but not too much to cause a lot of rolling, and enough breeze to sail, albeit not sail fast. We've had between 6 and 10 kts of wind behind us all the way, meaning we've been going at between 3 & 5 kts of boat speed. Pretty slow, but then we worked out that if we went any faster we we'd arrive in the middle of the night and whilst thats fine, I'm happy to arrive in daylight. Not that we have any say in it whatsoever - no turbo button to press here! Currently we are 35 miles from the eastern end of the island, with another ~20 miles after that. I expect we will get in in the morning. We can't see land yet - its funny living in a GPS world, you don't even question whether you're in the wrong place, but what if we're completely not where we thought we were, and the land wasnt where we thought it should be? That would be a bu66er.
There is a big black cloud up to windward, I am hoping it doesnt come and cause trouble for us on the final stages. I think I will have to gybe on the corner of the island (likely to be another woozy 0300 job) and then hopefully hold the wind along the bottom of the island to Ponta Delgada.
Ships time has gone a bit awry over the last couple of days, and today we found ourselves having a breakfast of pancakes at midday, followed by lunch of a bacon/avo/tomato wrap at 1600. Not sure why, but we're getting later and later. Pancakes were a great success. We haven't got round to baking bread on this trip, which is a shame, but we are at least eating our way through the stores. We are also now complete whizzes at Suguru which I think is some Sudoku variant, and I think if we were out here for another day then Emilia would force a manicure on me.
I had a shower today - OMG the feeling of being clean! Emilia is holding out, the skank - but to be fair to her, what's another day when you haven't showered since last month... And we are finally out of thermals and into shorts and T-shirts, although writing this it is getting cold. I also gave the cockpit and saloon a good freshwater clean so whilst Nutmeg isnt yet fit for full family inspection, she's on her way to looking respectable. Everything is just so salty.
We (I) have a jobs list for when we arrive, the first thing is to get the genoa off to be repaired - the leech has torn but I'm hoping its just the UV strip. Then fuel, laundry, water, clean the boat, have a beer, fall in a heap. I suspect Emilia's job list is simply shower and wifi, and good on her for that. She has been a superb shipmate and I'm going to miss her.
Right, got to go and eat more and try to get some sleep in before the corner.