Night 3: Starry starry night
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Mon 19 Sep 2022 01:24
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Today at noon we passed the last piece of land for
2 days the "Raz de Sein" off Brittany, the NW corner of France. Wind was a light
northerly and due to build and go East. The course is 209' basically straight to
the NW corner of Spain. Its been cold at night still, thermals and midlayers
required but as we get farther South its starting to feel warmer. Thank goodness
its getting warmer as I've only 2 sets of Thermals. The wind is now a
pretty hefty 20kts from behind and the sea state is quite big. After Kate have
an hour or so of fun with the A5, Rob wisely suggested I might wreck the sail
and we switched to the jib. The boat is still surfing at 9kts so speed is good.
24-36hrs to Spain.
Rob was alarmed that the rig was squeeking at him,
I then recalled the tension was on light from the last race so we had a midnight
job to do of tightening the rig up - not allowed in racing but easy enough to
do. I tied lines to the screwdriver and spanners to avoid any losses overboard.
The sky is a mass of stars, it’s a really clear
night. It always makes me think about how sailors in days gone by and even our
ancestors of thousands of years ago looked at those same stars. I can see Orion
and the Plough really clearly then still need to resort to the phone app to
identify the rest.
Onboard life is settled to a routine, 2 hrs on
watch, a bit of handover and eating then 2 hrs sleeping. I feel really
rested as I seem to be always in my bunk. The bunk is pretty cosy as well with a
duvet, sleeping bag and quilt as well as pillows.
This blog will be the first test of the fixed sat
system, so I'm not testing it with pictures yet.
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