30-11-2008 19:27N 25:34W Atlantic Crossing – day 8 On the menu: a wrap

Life on a kids boat also consists of serving good healthy food. Isabelle prepared a menu for the entire crossing. In this way provisioning is more easy and we can control the amount of fresh food we use. So we don’t use it up in the first week. And because we have a big fridge and a big freezer the cuisine is more or less the same as on shore. Very good. Isabelle is amazing in cooking up delicious diners on a moving boat with only two small burners. Yesterday we had Hutspot, a original Dutch recipe which consists of mashed carrots, onions and potatoes served with gravy, baked bacon and smoked sausages. Yummy.

And then during diner there was another treat: a wrap. Unfortunately not on our plates but in the forestay. Our trusted Jenny (nickname of our Genaker) proved to be a girl with an attitude. Our Jenny is on a roller and since it became time to reef for the night, we released the sheets. Alas the Jenny was still a little too much to wind and she just popped around the forestay in 27 knots of wind. It took two guys all theirs strength to get her unwrapped and down. We don’t want to do that again. Stupid mistake by me of course but I learn a lot everyday.

We were too tired to put the Genoa up so we settled for the Jib. We also had the reef the main too since it was still blowing fairly stiff and on a short handed boat energy saving is very important. It took me the full night to recover from the exercise.

So now we run the boat underpowered until we are more rested. We are still doing 6 knots and the boat is running smooth. So although we could go faster this strategy suits us better. Maybe we will be in St Lucia later but we will get there rested.

The weather in the Trade Winds is very complex with big patches of little wind and a major disturbance with squalls and adverse winds. We want to avoid that area so we are going more south than planned. Funny enough that means we are following Jimmy Cornell’s suggested route almost exactly.

The first week is done, two more to go!