The Third Man part deux
Christine's Atlantic Circuit
Peter Lansdale
Wed 30 Nov 2016 17:05
|
16:10.6N 032:16.7W
Well I'm back!
Of course you will all have read the earlier blogs, so
here's mine for today.
Overnight the wind hovered around the 5 - 8 knot range
which allowed us to deploy the genniker to accompany the main which has been
lonely for the past 3 days whilst motor sailing. during which we overtook Ian
and Glenda sailing on their yacht Lucy Alice. They aren't competing in the ARC
but are en route to Barbados. Mindful they set sail from Tenerife the day before
our departure and the size of the Atlantic combined with our choice of courses,
passing within 1/2 mile is amazing.
Now back to the boring bit, the wind has steadily
increased up to around 12 knots and at last we're stonking along in the correct
direction, or so the skipper tells us! We've been pestering Peter since we left
Portugal to get his sextant out(an instrument for measuring elevation of
celestial bodies, sun, stars etc for our non sailing readers) in order to
calculate our position. Well it appeared just before noon on the 28th with Peter
hoping to sight the sun at noon, eventually a reading was established and he
disappeared below to work his magic. He emerged today to proudly proclaim his
calculation was only 35 miles from our GPS position. Well done Peter, even if it
was 2 days ago!
So the majority (if not all) of the previous 3 days
we've been bored out of our minds, I tried a game of I-Spy but when unable to
use parts of the boat it finished rather quickly. Still sat on deck the skipper
announced "What do you think of it so far?" there was a pregnant pause, I was
waiting for the ghostly figure of good old Eric Morecambe to come wafting over
the ocean with his ventriloquists doll to shout "RUBBISH!"
Onto today, the skippers little book of jobs has
re-appeared causing the crew to scatter as far away as possible - not easy on a
yacht.
Due to the wind picking up we started playing around
with sheeting (nautical term - not a blasphemy) angle on the genniker to try and
hasten or progress to a bottle or two of rum. As can be seen from the skippers
photo's I think we got it right.
Well that's me up to date but keep watching this
space!
Good news the skipper has got his sextant out again - 2
more days of peace.
The Third Man
PS If you're reading this Dave, hope you're getting
better. Gaz |
