Southern Princess Day 1 12z 25:42N 16:31W

Southern Princess
John & Irene Hunt
Mon 26 Nov 2007 12:29
13:00 hours Sunday 251107 and we got away to a reasonable start and headed to a waypoint which would put us about 10nm off shore, so that we could avoid the wind acceleration zone down the last half of the east coast of Gran Canaria and then we turned south and started playing with our twistle rig. Didn't get a photo yesterday and it is not up today so when next up I will photograph it and then explain its mechanics.

Anyway the twistle worked well through various oscillations of the wind but at around 02:00 261107 we went back to a mainsail and reaching under the light weight genoa. Earlier this morning we changed to the heavy genoa and at the moment we are beam reaching with 2 reefs in the genoa and half mainsail at 8 plus knots. We are on course for our waypoint at 22N 29W or as the older timers say it "Sail south until the butter melts and then turn west!"

Justin & I are working the night watches and Irene is doing all the cooking and helping out during the day.

No chafe as yet although we are making up leather chafe guards for the spinnaker poles to try a new system.

All of us still a bit queasy and we hope this will go shortly, we can't wait for steady trade winds and an easier motion.

Cheers

JH