Horta to Brixham 2

41:04.52N 18:55.54W

3^rd  July 2015

11,630 Miles Since leaving Ramsgate by log.

RESULTS OF THE DAILY RUN CHOCOLATE BAR COMPETITION

Day                 Actual mileage                                   Nearest Guess and name

Day 1               96 miles            15 hours all sailing         88 miles            Norma

Day 2               137 miles          All sailing                      139/135 miles   Paul/Norma

Day 3               139 miles          All sailing                      141 miles          Paul

Day 4               150 miles          All sailing                      140/160           Adamant/Paul

The arrival in Brixham lottery stands at:

Paul                  9^th AM

Norma             9^th PM

Steve                10^th AM

Jen                   11^th AM

Adamant          11^th PM

            I am sitting below on the morning of the 2^nd July listening to the scrape, scrape, scrape, of Adamant polishing a brass porthole while Jen is upstairs in 30 Knots of wind standing her watch and keeping us all safe. Norma is practicing her Ukulele and Steve is sitting at the chart table staring myopically at the steadily falling barometer. Yes we have bad weather again, so I will break this edition into two parts; what we got up to yesterday and then tomorrow how we faired in the gale, or near gale let’s not exaggerate shall we.

            Yesterday was calm and the sea was relatively flat and so with the imminent arrival of this bad weather I decided to take advantage of the lull and sort out the fore stay.  If you have been paying attention you will remember that the deck fitting sheared off on our way to Flores and that we had, we thought, fixed it. On the morning of day two of this trip in a violently rolling sea there was a loud bang from the direction of the mast head and the fore stay went slack. Since then we have been running on staysail, main and mizzen alone with the furled foresail sheeted in tight to reduce any movement in the stay. I suspected that something had got caught at the top of the mast and we had tightened the stay against that in Flores and the subsequent rolling had shaken it free. In short someone had to go up the mast and check things out. Steve, being the sterling chap he is stepped forwards almost as fast as the rest of the crew stepped backwards and so we had him trussed up in the bosons’ chair and harness in no time at all. With Adamant and myself taking turns on the winch we soon hauled him to the top of the mast which was swinging wildly from side to side as Spectra rolled in the swell. It is amazing how the human body reverts to an ape like state so quickly when 60 ft up a mast, Steve was clinging on like a baby chimp to his mothers feeding station and letting out the odd squeak or two to boot. Happily for us on deck, and for him I am sure, he was soon finished and on his return to deck level informed us that no damage had been done to the mast head fittings. This kind of confirmed our supposition that the retaining  mushroom lug at the top of the stay had risen up when the deck fitting broke and got jammed when the stay came loose previously and on freeing itself in the swell had allowed the stay to slacken.

            Next problem, as Steve had managed to spin around the mast several times on his climb the halyards were now in a right old mess and in particular the mainsail halyard was wrapped around the Radar reflector. Steve at this point was sitting in the cockpit drinking water and counting his new collection of bruises. I did notice his head ducking lower and lower as it became obvious that another trip up the mast was required. I didn’t have the heart to ask him and so, benevolent dictator that I am, I temporarily removed my jack boots, and put the harness and bosons chair on for the next trip up. In order to get into the bosons chair I did have to slacken the waistline somewhat which makes me wonder if Steve is eating enough as the alternative is unthinkable. Bloody hell that was horrible! and I collected a set of bruises all of my own before returning to deck, but finally all of the halyards were free and we could move on. Just as an aside Norma’s running commentary from the cockpit of, “Big wave, Little wave, Calm Now, Ooh really big wave, Hold on!” was of absolutely no help to the poor bugger doing a conker impression half way up the mast, but it kept her busy and stopped her worrying too much I suppose.

            All that was left to do was to tighten the fore stay down at the bowsprit and see how it went. This involved me laying face down on the bowsprit twisting the furling cage while Steve laid over me (on top of me) to hold the stay in place, I now have CQR stamped permanently into my right hip bone and for some reason I feel all weepy and unloved. The comments from the crew were most unbecoming and the photographs positively obscene (I will publish them later when we are in port). As we have added a shackle to the forestay it wouldn’t tighten quite as hard as I would like but it is a darn sight better than it was and so after 4 hours of work we celebrated by poling out the yankee fore sail and goose winging for the rest of the day and most of the night. At midnight the predicted low pressure system began to make its presence known and so when Adamant came up for shift change I decided to rearrange the sails and get the boat settled down for the night. With Adamant working the cockpit and watching in case I went for a swim we: In this order:

1. Pulled the mizzen onto the centre line and re rigged the preventer to Port.

2. Gybed the mainsail over and then re rigged the main preventer to Port.

3. Furled in the fore sail.

4. Dropped and stowed the spinnaker pole.

5. Eased the stay sail over to Port.

6. Eased out the mizzen and rigged the preventer.

7. Boat still doing 9 knots so put another reef in main.

8. Now 0030 hrs, had a nice cup of tea and handed the watch over to Adamant.

All of this frenetic activity was watched, I am sure with great interest, from the gloriously central heated and luxurious bridge of a super tanker that was lying 4 miles to starboard of us at the time. I bet it gave them something to talk about later while down below playing pool on their gimballed snooker table.

We have been running all night in a force 6 to 7 and a 3 meter swell but it has been remarkably comfortable so far. Steve is just donning his foul weather gear as he is relieving Jen in 10 minutes and all is well with the world, apart from the scrape, scrape, scrape of Adamants polishing, I wonder if a crime of passion could be claimed in these circumstances?

It is now the morning of the 3^rd of July and what a night that was. The Grib file received earlier in the day showed that the expected low had taken a dip over the Azores and we would be in the centre of it as opposed to the bottom edge as planned. No great concern however as the wind strength was predicted to peak at 25 Knots and the swell at 2.2 meters so all easily manageable. By 6pm we had a solid F7 coming from the South East and a 2 meter swell. By 8pm it was a consistent F8 with 3 meter swell and so it went on. >From 9pm through to midnight the wind did not drop below 40 knots and probably averaged nearer to 45 or a very solid F9 with a swell easily in the 4-5 meter bracket. The maximum gust recorded by the instruments, and they don’t record anything that lasts for less than a minute was 52 knots. By this time we were reefed down to 2 reefs in the stay sail with two reefs in the mizzen and we were still going at over 9 knots. The biggest problem was keeping steerage way on the boat and the speed down to a safe level. We finally pulled all of the mainsail down when we were hitting over 10 knots of boat speed (max 10.7). Actually getting the beasty down in those conditions required both Steve and myself to hang onto the front edge with our feet off the deck because it was pinned so hard to the mast.

At 8pm I started our bad weather shift pattern, Steve was on Mummy watch and so stayed below unless needed to change sails, he did sterling work and even provided a hearty chicken casserole for the whole crew just when it was needed the most. I was on watch with Jen and Norma was on watch with Adamant, 2 hours on and two hours off which we kept up until 2 am when the wind finally dropped below 30 knots and we reverted to the normal single shifts. The most reliable, steadfast and dependable crew member was Spectra herself. Even with several tons of water on deck (it was sweeping solidly across the saloon hatches, pouring into the cockpit on a regular basis and one wave even managed to fill the main sail stack pack which is 6ft above deck level!) our good old girl just ploughed along shedding water over the bulwark rails as the hawse holes got overwhelmed. The difference between below decks and the cockpit was startling, looking down the hatch I could see Norma doodling on a note pad wedged in the corner and Steve cooking a meal all chatting away to each other while outside it was just awful and any conversation had to be shouted directly into your crewmates ear.

 Well that was last night this morning we have a lumpy sea, 15-20 knots of wind from the West and we are romping along at 7 knots. Everything below is wet and there are clothes hanging out to dry everywhere, while a very tired crew sleep the morning away accompanied by the hum of our generator which is heating water for warm showers later.

No more bad weather is predicted for several days and so we should be able to push on now with our nose pointed straight at the Brixham harbour entrance.

That’s it, I am going to wake someone up to keep an eye on things and then go to bed......blog again in two days...