Day 2
Ocean Gem
Geoff & Eileen Mander
Mon 8 May 2017 14:53
Time: Midday
Position: 23:50.830N 64:52.386W
Distance to Bermuda: 511NM
Distance run since yesterday: 161NM
Conditions continued to be near to perfect throughout much of Sunday afternoon. The wind moderated a little and our speed dropped accordingly so we took this as a chance to hoist the Cruising Chute. This put our speed through the water back to around 7 knots (and with the current our speed over the ground nearer to 8 knots).
The weather forecast from ARC control told us that we could expect some squalls during the night so at dusk we furled the chute but left it tightly wrapped in front of the forestay (its normal position). Close to midnight we were hit by a squall with strong winds and lots of rain. Somehow this managed to partially unwrap the upper part of the chute which started to flog quite violently and shake the rigging.
Paul and I had to venture onto the foredeck to tame the thing with Paul sitting on the pulpit handing the chute to the deck whilst I slowly released the halyard. We stuffed the sail, sopping wet, through the forehatch and returned to the cockpit soaked through. Fortunately we had taken it down before any damage had been done.
One bright note is that we had an email from ARC Rally Control to tell us that Nat's bag had turned up in Nanny Cay just before the ARC staff closed their office there and decamped to Bermuda. We hope that it is Nat's bag and not one belonging to some other unfortunate KLM customer. We won't find out till we get to Bermuda and take a look.