Breakfast club
Rhiann Marie - Round the World
Stewart Graham
Sat 21 Nov 2009 10:15
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Better progress has been made last night with at
last a freshening of the winds to 18 knots. This helps a lot. We will come very
close to a 200 mile run in this 24 hour period (we are measuring 1200 to 1200
for our daily runs, but of course from time to time we will choose a different
period when the statistics suit us! We are now finally below 20deg North where
we can start to seek out the trade winds. Position at 0730 today is 19:12.48N
023:30.24W and we have been doing an average of over 8 knots for the past 20
hours. Yesterday morning I was awoken to two things; a mid atlantic diving job
and a rumour aboard ship that there was a secret breakfast club going on
Angus and Roddy's watch round about 0600 just after I had knocked off and been
in bed for an hour and a half. Black puddings, eggs freshly baked bread bacon
was all on the menu you name it. Clearly Murdo got wind of this first and has
been up early every morning pretending not to be able to sleep and hovering
round with a duster dabbing here and there and keeping one eye on the galley.
"Would you like some breakfast?" chef would ask interupting Murdo's cleaning
charade. "Och no I'm fine" says Murdo unconvincingly. "Are you sure?" says chef.
"oh well ok" says the Murdo sheepishly, exhausted from lack of sleep in
case of exclusion from the breakfast club.
This morning after an hour and a half of sleep I
got up early myself. Not for a breakfast club invitation you understand, but to
review the sailing strategy. After flying solo on my watch and turning in a big
set of numbers there were high expectations of the following watch and I wanted
to claim some credit in case there was any silverware to be awarded for best
watch of the day or best daily run.
Now I am sure all you blog readers are fed up of
fishing stories and the one that got away... but....last night during happy hour
we got another stike and this time we got to the rod in time. We were doing over
8 knots and struggled to slow the boat while I struggled with a furious thick
lipped tuna. what a performance he put up and sadly for us he eventually after
10 minutes - got away.
However - we have now dicided on a new fishing
tactic. Put the rods away! This was a huge success as we had 7 flying fish come
to us and present them on the deck this morning. The amazing thing about this is
that one of them clearly smashed into the boom some 4metres above the water. The
blood and scales are there as evidence as is the sore head he got for his
efforts. however the focus today after our statistical annalysis yesterday is
VMG. We are therefor targeting 140 - 145deg TWA and with poled out genny
working her down to the waypoint. We also have much more wind which is most
likely the biggest factor in our performance improvement rather than our
technical annalysis - but you just know what we are going to claim if we reel
off our first 200 mile day. Though our trip to the Cape Verdes
has been slow to date we have not used the engine since clearing Gran
Canaria when we had a calm the very first night for about 10 hours. We do not
intend to use the engine despite carrying 2 1/4 tonnes of fuel (enough to steam
over 1500 miles!). In order to make our first 200 mile day we had a debate
about jettisoning fuel this morning but strictly on environmental
grounds we decided against it - for now!
At this moment we need another 28 miles for
the next three hours to make our 200 mile day. "Day" means mid day to mid day.
24 hour period means any 24 hour consecutive period. We just clocked 10.8 knots.
Watch this space...........
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