500 miles to Cape Town
Oldnick
Sat 25 Jan 2003 09:34
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Just 500 miles to go (36 degrees 42 South, 8
degrees 54 East) and with fair winds forecast we are likely to be
there early on the 29th January. Could have been quicker except for a mishap 5
nights ago around midnight - the point on the bow chainplate where the forestay
is attached gave way with an almighty bang and the forestay was "blowin in
the wind"! Given that it was 25 knots at the time and there was a half
furled yankee attached it was quite a mess. We dived onto the foredeck
(harnesses attached I might add) and took the next 2 hours bringing it under
control and fixing it to the deck again.
Since then we have not used any headsails apart
from the storm sail which is hanked on to the inner emergency forestay, so
we have had a few slow days.
Apart from that, we are running low on diesel so
are limiting our use of the engne for charging (which means that we are manully
steering), and are running low on gas for cooking. But it is a sunny
day, we have the spinnaker up and are making over 6 knots in the right
direction. So we are keeping our fingers crossed!
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