Tuesday 21 November
The Adventures of Tin Man
Andy Topp & Steve Arnold
Wed 22 Nov 2023 12:19
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23:33.250N
017:57.530W
what three words : sportiest.dawns.aloft We got the big sails down last night just before sunset
and dinner, and got ready for the over night sail plan - just the regular white
sails. After sending last night's blog (twice I think, by mistake) i hit the
sack to get some "sleep" but that was soon shattered as the wind got up and
Andy, Jooj and Will had to get a reef in the main sail to reduce the size.
By the time I got on shift at 3am to join Sam and
relieve Will, the wind had settled into a steady 15 knots, but around an hour
later it almost completely died. We had been anticipating Tuesday to be a
motoring day (having been told to expect as much since before the race began in
the meteroligist briefing) so when the wind dropped we made the decision to put
the engine on so as to ensure we kept progressing, and assumed it would be on
all day. However, after just a few hours it picked back up and we put up the
spinnaker with the genoa poled out to windward we made really good headway. It
was a beautiful sight and turned into another great sailing day.
We are taking a slightly different route to others and
are remaining east of the pack heading more southerly. Over the course of the
day a lot of other boats in the fleet have also turned more south as the wind is
meant to pick up from the south east moving north west over the next few days.
We hope our southerly trajectory will put us in the wind before everyone else
and so whilst it may look like we are at the back of the pack right now the plan
is that we will gain on the others as the week progresses. Once again, it's not
a race [insert side eye emoji here]. I'm doing a lot of data crunching from our
three hourly log to check on average speed, distance to go etc. Being an excel
geek i have two models running currently which both anticipate our arrival in St
Lucia between 7th and 9th of December. Even if they're wrong I'm enjoying
creating them way more than I should.
With a couple of hours of engine also comes the luxury
of hot water so today was our first hot shower day. Actually that's being kind -
today was our first shower day!! Today was also dealing with another leaky jerry
can. Fortuately we only had to clear up a small spill in the bottom of the
locker but it could have been much worse! When you're carrying 300 litres of
fuel in 20 litre cans these things are bound to happen. We have around 700 miles
a fuel so plenty to get us to Cape Verde if needed.
Against all the odds, we noticed that we had a fish on
our line mid afternoon. I think it is fair to say that this took us all by a
considerable amount of surprise as we then tried to figure out what we should do
next. Not being great with fish anyway I retired below deck whilst Jooj and Will
looked the poor creature in the eye and bashed its head in. After consulting our
handy "Fishing for Dummies" book, Jooj dispatched with its head and then
filetted it. It was a sizeable mahi mahi (dorado) and made a delicious appetiser
ahead of tonight's pork fajitas. Washing off blood spatter is an image I'm not
going to get out of my head very easily. If that wasn't bad enough I also had to
fix a dodgy flush on the toilet for which there were few volunteers. I think
this made me feel less guilty about hiding downstairs during the masacre.
The image of Sam's bread making in the kitchen is far
more wholesome and the thought of fresh bread for tomorrow is welcomed.
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