June 14th 33 55.227N 56 01.103W
Persephone... Cruiser/Racer
Nigel & Karen Goodhew...
Wed 14 Jun 2017 21:14
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It is just after 2100 UT, about 5 in the afternoon
on our watches and we are bringing an eventful day to a close.
Last night, cruising along under the spinnaker,
enjoying a new zeal with wind and therefore speed afteran eternity of light
winds and boat speeds under 4 knots, we might have miscalculated! In the
early hours of the morning, we were overtaken by a rain cloud. The wind had been
a very useful 14 or 15 knots but as the solitary cloud in a starlit sky
encroached on us, the heavens opened with biblical rain and the wind rose to 17
knots. Then there was a gust of 20, and our poor old light blue kite simply
could not take it.
With the deck light on a moment or two later, we
could see that the bulk of the sailwas in the water alongside the port side of
Persephone, but that the tapes were intact. Swiftly but carefully we got the
whole lot back on board and the halyard down....and it seems we have everything
that once was the spinnaker, but will it ever fly again?
After completing the night on a goosewinged set up,
we hoisted the heavy kite this morning and have been sailing well with that. But
we will likely take it down after dark as we have no other fall back
position.
On the wildlife front, we noticed somecurious
little blue and black striped fishthis morning. About 12 cm long, three of them
were trailing in our wash, just under the transom...apparently slipstreaming us
for miles. Only when the breeze piped up to 17 knots did we "shake them off", as
boatspeed in surfs topped 9 knots plus at times.
Overall a good day with 137 miles logged. Our 4th
highest.
1238 miles to Flores. We are about half
way.
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