WE WILL GET THERE HONEST!!!
Piccolo
Andrew Yates
Sun 14 Dec 2008 19:24
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Well what a day we,ve had today! At 6am gmt we
reached our penultimate waypoint and gybed for hopefully one of the last times
this trip! We then sto goarted steering 290 degrees straight at Rodney
bay(St Lucia) Polled out genoa with wind right up the kissa! As the sun started
to rise the wind started to shift a little more round to a comfortable spinnaker
angle! So we got out "Big Red" and strated really trucking! 8 to 9.5 knots and
with 300 miles toy pan out quite right go, as crew surfaced they started
making preddicted arrival times!(trust me these never really pan out quite
right) Sitting in the cock pit watching the speed over ground" 48 hours till we
get there" a voice shouted from down below!
e downThe wind kept coming round and the pole got
closer and closer to the forestay! The boat heeled at quite a rude angle for
that time of the morning really. Well we were all thining about Sunday breakie
that Nick had planned!
Kite down was decided and genoa unfurled fully to
beam reach in 20 plus knots! As it unfurled the top of the sail started pulling
out of the forestay track so sail was dropped on to the deck and refed in with a
little lashing around the top of the sail and the track! As the sai lwas
rehoisted it got stuck about 2 /3rds of the way up and would not come back down
either! Matt was hoisted up the forestay and cut the lashing off and twisting
round and round the forestay screams of terror turned into unstoppable laughter"
it,s like a roundabout you just can,t stop" Eventually said crew and sail were
dropped. The genoa was rehoisted and furled in a couple of turns to stop
the problem occuring again!
Wind then came behind again so "Big Red "was put
up, then the wind got up more so "Mellow Yellow"(chicken chute) was put up! Then
a knot that had been mentioned between a couple of foredeck that might need retying came undone a kite ended up in the
water and one and only halyard pulled out of the mast!! After a couple of mins
chat, Jack was hoisted up the mast with a new heavy weight to send mouse line
down with, and after 2 or 3 attempts we had 2 newly moused in spinnaker
halyards! "Big Red" was put up!, the wind got up so down came "big Red" and up
went "Mellow Yellow"!! A reef was put in the main and off we sped towards St
Lucia again!
Getting quite settled into new set up wind just aft
of the beam 290 degrees steered" new course to steer 275 degrees" came from down
below! 250 miles to go with a angle change of 15 degrees!?! Course was
reluctantly altered but topic dropped! As hand held GPS,s were brought on deck
and were all saying 291 degrees to St Lucia a calm panic spread down below! Ben
radio,d a nearbye catamaran we had blasted past earlier but the only had paper
charts(old stylie!)
Eventually Andrew turned the boat instrument off
and on a couple of times and eventually the boat started to agree with the now 3
handheld GPS,s in the cockpit! So all now relaxed that we are not going to stove
into nearby Barbados! or miss St Lucia we can carry on our thundering
journey(now 230 miles to go,thats 25 and a half hours at 9 knots!! as long as we
don,t wipe out to often,blow to many more halyards or head in the wrong
direction!! ha ha.
Hopefully tomorrows blog we will have a more
accurate eta! and maybe a photo or 2 of us wobbling a bit on the dock with a few
rum punches!!
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