Kath's grand day out
Global Yacht Racing's P42
Global Yacht Racing
Sat 20 Sep 2008 10:04
40:34.0N 9:36.9W
So, enough of the experienced skipper's
words. Here are a few (!?!) from a landlubber aboard, it's Kath
here.
It's my first time aboard a boat that's not moored
in a marina at night and out of sight of land. The intrepid office worker
offshore!
Of the boats and routes to choose for a first
offshore passage, it's interesting. The boat has the least options for a
comfy seat on deck ever and the option to slide off the back with ease, bar thin
wires, sorry - 'guard rails'! That said the inside has the 'most'
comfy bed/hammock (lee-cloth) bunks in the world as a
compensation.
And the chosen route - the infamous Bay of Biscay,
potential sea-sick city being, quote Kate, 'rough as rats'! Not sounding like my
best decision ever, however with a reputation for flat calm or high seas with
luck heavily on my side our crossing has had good breeze and been uneventful in
weather respects.
So, reading the blog to date , it's true that we have had an excellent set of weather for Biscay. But hang on, that said, for us inexperienced in these things for a 'flat sea' (quote Paul) I see 2 metres of rolling swell coming up behind us, that changes when we go over the continental shelf into deep water to much longer waves. Kinda cool, kinda rolly-around, glad the bunk is half hammock eh!
But enough of my ramblings, our news here. As I
write we are heading on a course of 185 degrees towards Cascais after an
excellent day yesterday. The other watch started the trend of wildlife
with jumping squid at the bow. Next, at the end of our watch we had
dolphins swimming on the bow a while. With 15-18 knots of north-easterly
we continued to sail on a very broad reach, but as the breeze dropped
skipper Ric showed me the ropes for setting a spinnaker. I now know the
difference between a sheet and a guy and was dead impressed with the
result!
Having the boat sailing flatter and slower, Skip
runs a line off the back with some top fettling (thanks for that elastic line
Owen!) for a spot of fishing. We, sorry, Ric, manages later to land a
Spanish Mackerel which is then artfully prepared without blunt
instruments (to kill it) or sharp knives in the dark - glad of my fish filleting
skills all of a sudden.
As our sunny day continues we have a whale
sighting, porpoise passing and dolphins fishing off the bow in the nav lights
after dark, fish jumping all over the place. By this point we were
motoring steadily south at 7 knots and the dolphins just darted back and
forth and tearing off ahead of us - quite a turn of speed on
them!
So that was our day with one final image to
share. The spinnaker was still up after dark and the wind
was dropping as we were hacking a poor half-concussed fish on the
deck. So the experienced spinakkerites run around the millions
of ropes on deck with me sat amongst the fray with a filleted chunk of
fish sat in a frying pan artfully balanced in the cockpit. Al well
worthwhile - he made a great breakfast fried in that very same
pan.