Course  290

 

Speed 6 kts

 

 

 

Ocean sailing is hard on boats. 

 

Chris has gleefully sent us updates on the sorry state of ARC boats arriving in Rodney Bay Marina with blown sails, leaks and damage to their rig after making the same crossing that we have done.  Many of these are racing boats and they deliberately rnanage the fine line between speed and damage.  But we are also seeing cruisers like ourselves with problems.

 

Early this morning we saw a large yacht crossing our stern with no sign of a sail up.  It was blowing the usual 20 knots so there was no obvious need to be running on engine as a sail make life far more comfortable.  We called him up on VHF and he is a French Yacht " Que Pauro" who lost his rudder 5 days ago at the height of blow we received.  Since then he has been making his way very slowly towards Martinique from where a tug is on its way to tow him for repairs in Antigua. He seemed cheerful enough when we spoke 4 hours ago but we have just dropped all our sail as there is a band of rain going over with winds of 40 knots plus and we have have heard him speaking to a French ship locally.  He is no longer so happy !

 

We have had our own trials and tribulations.  We had another band of rain and strong winds through at 6 the morning (these are pretty common here and there are several each day) so we were all up to reef.  We left it a little late and tore the end fitting from our whisker pole.  We need the pole to hold out the jib and give us consistent speed downwind so this resulted in an hours work with saw and epoxy in the main cabin - we now have a working whisker pole but it is 6" shorter than it was yesterday.

 

This became irrelevant when we noticed that the forestay was slack mid-morning.  We have been using the removable inner forestay to fly a second jib for days, so initially put the slackness down to this stay taking most of the load.  Actually the link between the foresrtay and mast has failed and only the sail and it's halliard were in place.

 

We still have the removable inner forestay and have added a wire spinnaker halliard tight to the bow, so the mast is safe but we can no longer fly our genoa.  That said we are still making 6 knots plus and going well.

 

Domestic 

 

It's Emily's birthday and we will be having cake !  Happy Birthday ! Were having our last Tollesbury ham tonight with mash and carrots followed by "yes" more cake.

 

And a "heads-up".  We had anticipated being in Antigua a few days ago but weather and adventures are not like that.  Our Iridium contract is monthly and expires at midnight on Thursday 19th December.  We will be unable to send email or blog, or to receive texts after this time.  We will do a final update from home and expect to be in and safe by late Friday afternoon.  Some of you will be hearing us on the phone once we are in .

 

Natural History.

 

Nothing new seen. And absolutely definately no sharks !

 

 

 

 

 

Em and Rowles Kids - Stop watching "deadly 60" till we get back.  Too busy fixing things and changing sails to swim anyway !

Mum and richard for there near costant stream of sport and news updates.

 

Sadie