16:37.8N 47:33.9W 4th December Moonlight Watch
The Snark on The ARC
Ben Little
Fri 4 Dec 2009 04:12
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Morning Bloggers
Easily the slowest night of the ARC so
far, which is disappointing since when we get within grips of the tropical
air temperatures and can almost taste the rum punch to be slowed down by an
uncooperative wind is very frustrating. Not only is the wind 5-10 knots
lower than we have been experiencing it is also from directly behind where we
want to go. For the non sailors out there it may sound like a good thing,
but with our rig of sails going directly down wind is very hard to do as the
sails continuously want to change sides on the boat (Gybe) and make lots of
banging and flapping. Not great at tonight when folks are trying to
sleep. We don't carry a full on spinnaker or a downwind sail like
the parasail so we are left with this banging and flapping rig which is quite
unsatisfactory on top of which the straight downwind sail is the slowest point
of sail since with the wind behind you there is no aerodynamic effect from the
sails.
Even more frustrating the boat we are sailing close
to seems to be able to hold a better angle than us! I have just
changed Gybe to follow them and be sociable. They may even be going faster
than us which would be doubly galling. Will have a look at the fleet
positions and see who it could be, we have not seen a sail for 2 or 3 days so it
is interesting, I hesitate to hail them since it is the middle of the night AT
LEAST WE ARE STILL MOVING, just..... Had to stop writing there for a while as
Dugald popped his head up to request a less noisy course. I gybed
back onto our other line as easing off on the starboard Gybe starts to take us
along a northerly vector which is actually taking us further from our
destination. Well until we get a little more wind the banging will
continue anyway as the wind is not sufficient to fill the sails when we go over
the bump of a wave, even though they are much smaller. Lets hope this tack
is a little better.
If this keeps up maybe tomorrow morning would be a
good time for Dugald to have his mid Atlantic swim. Kalandia, a yacht
nearby was doing man overboard drills yesterday as part of a Yachtmaster course
I understand. Maybe they would like to have a live specimen to work
with. Hauling a sopping wet Dugald from the ocean would be entirely more
realistic than a fender and bucket.
Finally our Generator seems to be working.
The Solar panels I expect will work eventually but I think the battery is so low
it was taking too long, also the panels are leaning away from the sun
angle. We rigged up a direct connection from the main engine battery to
the Generator starter battery using a double run of normal electrical
cable. I was afraid it would get too hot but it seems OK. Once the
battery is full we can just rely on the solar for a top up I guess. What
was Reiner (our engineer) thinking about, the installation is clearly not fit
for purpose. We clearly need a proper connection to the existing charger
or another charging unit specifically for this installation. I am also
thinking to re-install our old shore power charger in parallel in switched
mode) so that I can have a booster charge to the main battery set.
While it charges up fine, it takes a very long time with all the applications
running off the batteries to get them up to full charge from a low charge state
(which we found ourselves in with all the generator problems). It may be
best to do this myself since then I know how it all works.
So far I think this blog is going to go down as one
of the less interesting reading back, so lets hope for more entertaining news
tomorrow and more wind. So what else happened today on the boat.
Finally after several days of idle threats, battle
commenced between the Royal Navy (England, Rule Britannia!) the US North
Atlantic fleet (not fair to take on the whole US) and Scotland (???)
in our to the death battleships tournament. So far the scores are one
apiece, Scotland took an early lead defeating the hated English
by the narrowest of margins. Jingoism was running high and given the
chance I am sure that Dugald would have slapped on the Wode and gone blue on
us. For those of you not familiar with
Scottish custom wode is a kind of blue paint/early sun tan cream that the
Scots use to protect their lily white skin from the harsh English sun when then
attacked their friendly neighbours, who of course only wanted to bring
civilization and plumbing to their disadvantaged neighbours (and maybe get
an early claim in on some oil rights). In the spirit of the
special relationship team USA then struck a retaliatory blow by
convincingly routing the Scots. The English then turned on
their allies and destroyed the North Atlantic command without breaking
sweat. Expect further updates tomorrow, especially if the slack
winds continue, this and the fact that the ice maker is now back on line
has allowed cocktail hour to establish itself which may account for the
enthusiastic engagement of children's games. We have yet to break out the
cluedo as I fear the cards would blow away, similarly we have yet to continue to
endless Gin Rummy (other Snark hands will recall) game but tomorrow if the
wind continues as is may be the opportunity.
On the food front our lack of fresh meat is
beginning to show in the menu plan. While we still have a good variety of
food which will last a week or 2 more it is now coming mostly from tins or
preserved goods. Actually it tastes OK but it is not very satisfactory to
prepare. We really need more fish in our diet. The Chilli we had
tonight was actually quite good and we still have some fresh veg but we are
coming to the end of it. For any future trips I think we can afford to
carry a little more fresh meat as the cold boxes really do work in preserving
the life span and we have had very little wastage. I am told that catching
fish around the full moon is hard, however Kalandia the yacht I mentioned
earlier is offering fresh fish if we can RV with them (bit far off), so it must
be nonsense, the lure goes out at sunrise.
In closing I would like to update our plea to our
Wind Witch who so far has out performed the wind routing services of the Nordic
Wizard and Chris the ARC expert for hire (no real basis for these claims
but..) Can we have another 5-10 Knots and wind from the North East please
or at least a little more northerly than the due East we seem to have at
present. South east would also be fine. Just not Due East if it can
be helped.
That's me blogged out for tonight.
Same channel tomorrow.
Ben
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