Do Moose’s Snore ??
Rik
Tue 21 Nov 2023 14:39
This is how our bent batten end should look but it was already down and in the sail bag before I could photograph it.
For supper last night Caroline and Kath cooked Blackened Wahoo, blackening is a Caribbean spiced rub, given to us by one of the other boats. It was so good, best fish I’ve had in ages, and the perfect size to feed the six of us.
The alarms went off at 03:45 this morning for the sunrise spinnaker hoist, we rose to find very little wind and what’s more coming more from the east, forcing us further north. We use an autopilot feature called “wind steer”, which rather than holding a steady compass course, it keeps us at a set angle to the wind. This means we don’t have to keep adjusting the sails and hopefully avoid crash gybing ! but if the wind changes, so does our course, so we need to pay attention. With less than ten knots of wind we decided our best option was to sail with spinnaker only, so we completely dropped mainsail and fixed the boom in one position to avoid the squeaking. The angle on the swell meant Moose was regularly rocked from side to side making the spinnaker collapse on a regular basis. We tried heading further down wind but even at 180 degrees to the wind we were still rocking, so we decided to gybe. This involves; snuffing the spinnaker, dropping it on deck, re-routing the lines, retying the sheet, tack and halyard (the right side of the forestay !!) then re-hoisting on the other side of the boat and finally raising the snuffer. This was a surprisingly swift and efficient process and generally a very good effort all round. We are definitely getting better at sail changes, we are starting to feel like propers sailors. I keep meaning to take photos but it always seems to be all hands on deck.
However we do have a picture of the fabulous corned beef hash that Caroline knocked up for breakfast this morning
And finally, does anyone know if Mooses snore?? There was definitely a noise on board last night that sounded like they do !! Hours were spent trying to locate it and even when we thought it was a turning block and added some “one drop”, the noise continued……