Day 4. Position 20:23.286N 020:24.610W

Stravaig
Thu 27 Nov 2008 17:46
We are all now well settled into our watch rotas - Cameron completely missed
his watch last night and Stephen got up an hour late for his night time
one!! To be fair on Cameron, Scott was having so much fun sailing in the
dark in a 16 gusting to 20 with the kite up last night that he decided to
leave Cameron to sleep on rather than wake him! The dolphins continued to
play alongside us all night giving us a spectacular display to go with the
firework display that Mr Shooting Star seems to give us every night!
Amazing! At one point last night one shooting star that Tom and Scott saw,
was so bright that they thought that someone had let off a flare!

We decided to keep the kite up all night to take advantage of the stronger
winds that we were at last experiencing in the hope that we would make up
ground on a couple of the other Oyster's who we think are some 20 or so
miles ahead of us at the moment. It is however difficult for us to tell how
well we are doing (or not doing!) compared to everyone else so any feedback
in this regard would be greatly appreciated not that we are competitive or
anything!!

Today was fairly uneventful as far as the sailing was concerned. We saw only
one other ARC contender, a Beneteau 42 flying a full kite. She came very
close to us and eventually overtook us in the late afternoon. Shortly after
this, at around 5.30pm, Stephen, Cameron and Scott were on deck when
suddenly the mainsail fell down! Yup, it literally fell down! It was an 'all
hands on deck' moment! Poor Alex, he was in bed catching up on his beauty
sleep at the time!! Once we got control of the mainsail we stabilised the
boat in order to allow Tom to assess the situation. Tom put on his
'ballcrusher' harness and headed up to the top of the mast to see what was
up (see photo). Try and imagine what it must be like climbing up a 100 foot
mast while the mast that you are climbing is rocking and rolling in the
middle of The Atlantic! We were there and we couldn't imagine what it was
like! It looked terrifying! The prognosis was that the fitting that holds
the sail to the main halyard had snapped and would need to be replaced.
Anyway, a long story short, but we managed to get it all fixed and the
mainsail back up again all within a couple of hours or so. Most importantly
no one was hurt and no damage was done.

We continue to head south to keep hold of the winds. There is a real
temptation to start heading west now since we know a lot of the other
competitors are beginning to do this, however the feeling here is that we
should keep going in this direction for tonight at least and then reassess
things again in the morning. We are now only 240 miles North of Cape Verde.

Good night.

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