Friday evening report 19th Jan. 16 20.647N 40 21.584W
Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Fri 20 Jan 2017 19:26
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Today, we have done something I have never done
before in a Sigma 38. It has been a cracking day's sailing, under beautiful blue
skies, with the spinnaker pulling us along in a generally south westerly
direction. What is different is that we did not shake out the reef in the
mainsail we slabbed in overnight, before hoisting the kite this
morning.
The reasoning was simple;
Yesterday, the two of us spent a good deal of our
time preparing for, or recovering from, wind speed and direction changes
associated with a series of showery squalls which developed during the day. We
find it quite a lot of work to drop the kite, pole out a genoa and take in the
reef in the main, only to reverse the procedure after the squall has passed. So
what if we leave the reefin? That job, which requires turning te boatinto,
or at least across the wind, could be left out, and the kite hoists and drops
are becoming second nature.
Well it has worked well today, in terms of
Persephone's performance, though we havenot had the squalls to deal with at
all....but we were prepared.
So it'sall good, and I'd recommend it. Not sure
quite why it seems such a radical move...we should have done this years
ago!
1100 miles to go to Barbados.
All fine here
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