Day 1

About an hour before we were due to check out, Matt was oiling the spinnaker pole and somehow the mast fitting broke – as the winds were forecast to be from behind, it meant we were going to have to try to 2 sail reach for the whole of the passage.

We set off as planned and went out into a slightly rolling sea and15 knots of wind from the east.  For the first few hours we had a very pleasant 2 sail reach with the occasional large wave disturbing the wind in the sails for a few minutes.  Around  9pm the wind started to go further round to the east causing the genoa to collapse and clank around.  We tried gybing at around 10pm but that was no better so had to gybe back again at around midnight.  We left the genoa rolled and sailed all night with the main only – even though the boat speed occasionally dropped to below 5 knots we were able to make an average of 6.6 knots.

This morning as dawn broke the clouds came over to give us a bit more wind so we were able to 2 sail reach again for an hour or so.  Matt has been working on a temporary fix for the pole and if he has the right bits in his toolbox, he may be able to cobble something together.  Meanwhile we are doing a respectable 6.5 – 7 knots under main only.  The sea is quite rolly but mainly on the aft quarter so not too uncomfortable.

Shipping trade has been busy but so far we haven’t encountered anything closer than 10 miles.  No sign of any sea creatures but the occasional seabird.

Update:  Matt’ll fix it has fixed it so we are now poled out!

Date and time: 10^th October 10.30 local (GMT + 4 hrs) 

Position:   S20:15:054 E060:37:325

24 hours distance: 174nm