Tuesday 28 November 2023
The Adventures of Tin Man
Andy Topp & Steve Arnold
Tue 28 Nov 2023 21:47
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15:11.87N
32:17.29W What three words : coffered.breezes.phrases
Up until now the Atlantic has been reasonably kind to
us. We have had a nice steady amount of wind: it rises and falls but is
generally pretty predictable. The weather has been absolutely superb with wall
to wall blue skies pretty much every day, beautiful sunshine and a temperature
around 30 degrees with the perfect breeze. We are sailing downwind so our
apparent wind is reduced as we are moving with it which means it generally feels
nice and calm.
The nights are also getting warmer as we move west, and
long thin trousers and thin jackets through the night have given way to shorts
and t-shirts, but this has consequences. When I came on shift at 1am this
morning to let Will go to bed we exchanged the customary
shift-switch-pleasantries that you do when you're both quite sleepy. His tone
suggested it had been a relatively mundane four hour shift with pretty much
nothing to do but sit and stare out at the moonlit ocean. Tin Man was sailing
nicely in the right direction. The swell was there, but we are getting used to
that now - constantly switching your posture to adjust for the often 45 degree
pitch change in the room you're standing in has become second nature. Within
what felt like minutes things started to change. Sam and I noted that we thought
we could feel rain. Anywhere else this isn't really an issue, but when you're in
the Atlantic it means that a potential squall is coming - a suddenly appearing,
short lived, rain storm with potentially gale force winds. At night this can be
unnerving and the way to cope with it is to reduce your sail size as quickly as
possible in preparation for what may come. We concluded we would do so and
pulled the main and genoa in to reef two; the middle reef setting. As the wind
picked up we watched on the radar and in the distance as several pretty nasty
squalls formed off to our port and starboard sides. Downwind this isn't an issue
- the nasty ones come at you from behind!
One dark cloud formation passed over us and we got a bit
wet but it didn't come into it's own until it had passed over us and was well
ahead, forming a few miles away and depositing all of its energy into the sea
and not on our heads. By the time I left Jooj at 5am and handed over to Andy it
all seemed to have settled down and the moonlight was once again illuminating
the water.
We have been treated for the last few nights to a full
moon. Whilst this is beautiful it also completely destroys any chance of seeing
any stars with the exception of another amazing shooting star witnessed by Sam -
a bright flame falling vertically down into the sea. Through the night we were
again thankfully free of flying fish with a death wish, but late this afternoon
we found one stiff as a board, on the side deck - a complete mystery as no one
heard it or saw it land on the boat.
Our milestone for today was that we are now closer to
Brazil than we are to Gran Canaria. It's something that boggles our minds every
day; we all seem to comment at least once a day that we cannot believe we have
sat on this little boat all the way from Weymouth on the south coast of the UK.
Tin Man has continuously moved - whilst we slept, ate, showered, cooked,
cleaned, worked out, read our books, bludgeoned a fish to death, did 'science',
wrote blogs. At an almost steady pace equivalent to a brisk walk we have
travelled from Europe to the west coast of Africa and now we are in the middle
of the Atlantic. 24/7, he keeps us progressing.
The bananas finally ripened. Having been stubbornly
green for now 11 days they finally gave up so to celebrate we had pancakes for
lunch - ham and cheese for starters and banana and Nutella for afters, and all
it took was a quick email to our shore based support unit (Steph) to email over
the pancake recipe for us. Again, thanks Steph. Andy won the banana sweepstakes,
much to the rest of the crews surprise and dismay. Luckily the crepes helped
ease the pain.
We continue to try and get as far south as possible -
the lack of wind threatens to slow progress, so to ensure we continue to sail as
well as we have we keep inching south. Many boats are already significantly
further south than us but we are really pleased with our progress, really happy
with our pace and the pace of life we have created for ourselves on board. We
have settled into a routine now; we rise early, we might change the sail
configuration for the day, and then we sit to discuss highly important topics
which range from the ridiculous to the fascinating, the latter normally
being provided by Sam who is an unrivalled fountain of knowledge,
explaining in great detail, and with great passion, how something works. This
morning it was about GPS satellite positioning. For someone with an almost
unquenchable thirst for knowledge I find these conversations extremely
enlightening.
After that we tend to eat lunch early, and then it's a
busy day of napping, changing the sail plan, staring in awe at the surrounding
ocean, doing a little work out on the bow, reading, preparing dinner, and then
bed! Aside from obviously sailing in the Atlantic etc etc we did finish a bottle
of Rum off yesterday which provided an empty bottle for us to make a pre-mixed
batch of negroni - sunset at the captains table tonight was delicious! Sam has
reminded me to tell you, dear reader, that this is all actually very hard work,
and he's right, it is. It's a pretty serious thing we are doing but no one said
seriousness precludes negronis.
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