38:34.65N 9:57.43E On Route from Sicily to Mallorca approaching the south coast of Sardinia
The Snark on The ARC
Ben Little
Fri 28 Aug 2009 03:03
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The night is pitch black with the stars hardly able
to punctuate the deep black of the night. We left San Vito Lo Cappo on the
western end of Sicily, where we stopped to top up the tanks with fuel, at around
9am yesterday and have made quite good progress since. It was a much
better day for sailing than others we have had and we started the day by
hoisting our big yellow Asymmetric Spinnaker which pulled us along at around 8
Knots with 10-12 Knots of wind of the stern. However the wind was very
fickle today and it quickly switched around so that we were on reach with the
wind from the south at 15 Kn as we moved away from Sicily and then it moved to
more of a south westerly and we were hard on the wind for the next 4
hours. It was a fun stretch of sailing! We saw on the horizon a set
of white sails, the first we had seen all day and gave chase. The Snark
was too much for the French boat we were chasing and we made rapid ground and
past them around 2pm. I admit it was a bit of an unfair contest as we were
a bigger boat, however it did feel good. As they were following the
same line as us and really fighting to maintain course I suspect they too are
headed for Mallorca as Sardinia is quite some degrees to North. When
dawn breaks in around 2 hours I hope we can see Sardinia which will be our only
sight of land until we hit Mallorca in around 48 hours time. We were
helped on the way this past evening with a return of a strong wind out of the
south east which again saw our Spinnaker. It is a first for me to fly it
at night and it was great fun propelling us along at around 9 Knots for a couple
of hours while I slept on deck with Pete on watch. Regrettably we had to
take it down as the wind moved around again. Pete was then left on engine
watch till I took over at 2 am.
The wind is on our beam now but it is quite feeble
and will not give us the 6 + Knots we need to keep to schedule and catch Pete's
flight, so we stay under engine for now but I hope as the sun rises we will see
a better wind for sailing tomorrow.
Other non sailing items, our new fishing rod is a
struggle. We cannot seem to avoid getting the line fatally twisted no
matter that we have a spinner on it. I am also not at all convinced that
the weighting system is working correctly. I will try again tomorrow but I
fear we need some better tuition to help us solve this. I have also come
down with a cold, which given the climate is a surprise. It is warm and
sultry, or perhaps I should say DAMP, It is so very humid that one breaks out
into a sweat doing anything. I hope that the air will clear
tomorrow. There are a number of thunder heads around but more to the north
and east of us now (per forecast) so we are unlikely to get hit, but I hope that
the passing of the low will clear the air.
Bye for now
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