Blanket in the Bottle Locker
Pemandia
Peter Fabricius
Wed 23 May 2018 18:17
Oh dear, I hear you say, Peter has lost it. We’ve all been a bit worried about him and now he has gone completely loopy. Worry not, dear reader, all is well and not, as far as Iknpw cementing just yet. I wrote earlier about rolling in the following wind and apart from being uncomfortable it is also noisy. So a towel in the galley locker where we keep various bottles of olive oil, vinegar and jars and then a blanket in the drinks locker quietened everything down!
It has been a lovely day. This morning I set my big reaching sail thinking the spinnaker might be too much to handle. There was not much wind at that stageand everything was slopping around. Even though I had silenced lockers inside, outside the sails were slatting and blocks rattling on the deck as ropes slackened and tightened.
After a while I decided use the spinnaker pole to hold out the reaching sail which improved things. Then I furled the mainsail completely and set the ordinary genoa ‘goosewinged’ i.e. on the opposite side of the big reacher. This is close to the classic trade wind rig of twin running sails (ideally with two poles) and it worked a great. Initially we were only just managing 3.5-4 knots but I am not in a hurry and that is much better than motoring. By lunchtime the wind picked up and I’ve had a fine afternoon running down wind and 5.5 - 7 knots, with a lovely motion to the boat. It’s been a fine sunny afternoon and all is well!
My nearest landis Ushant and the peninsula of Brest etc which was some 80 miles away. Now it is about 115 as I head towards NW Spain. I am about 35 miles outside the main shipping lane, but amazingly there are 2fishing boats near me.
On which note, I must see how this evening’s fish pie is coming on.
Peter
Sent from Yacht Pemandia