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
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