15:14.68N 52:07.745W
Tioram 4
Tina & Tony
Mon 7 Dec 2009 19:12
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Monday 7th December, 13:00
Well, what a difference a day, and a couple of
uninterupted hours sleep, makes to the morale of the good ship Tioram! After the
exploits of Sunday, everyone onboard is now well recovered and in good spirits
having been able to enjoy a day sitting in the sun.
We are currently still running down wind with 3
reefs in the main and poled out gennie, managing 6 knots but heading
northwesterly towards my home, Nassau in Bahamas, so slightly too far north but
given the wind angle we cannot do much about that. Unfortunately we are stuck on
this sail plan at the moment as the new main halyard keeps on slipping on the
clutch so we don't want to risk more sail being out - perhaps a solution would
be to reroute it through another of the clutches so we'll see.
Our plan for the rest of the trip, as long as the
winds remain as they have done, is to gybe every 12 hours to run down the rhum
line to St Lucia. In fact the stakes have just increased as our rival, Lorenzo
on Mabi Too has just passed a mile astern of us. They've done exceptionally well
given that they blew out their gennie and have been hand steering for the past
week due to steering ram problems, so after 2000+ miles it is all square and
will be a match race to the finish, although we have just radioed them and said
that we want to get in during daylight hours, so will be willing to give up our
position to them, but only on that basis! It just means we have to have to get
in some good mileage over the next 3-4 days to pull ahead again.
This was the first radio conversation we've had
with another boat for quite a number of days and was more than welcome to hear
another voice, not that we're all not getting along but it was good to hear
something different if you understand! We did try to radio another yacht that we
passed last night, from about a mile away we called them on the vhf, shone a
light on our sail and even did a shadow puppet performance for them on the sail,
but they either weren't interested or below deck and not monitoring
vhf.
Last night was another entertaining one with no
moon until 10:30 and us sailing in total darkness. In about an hour we must have
counted at least 20 shooting stars as we helmed towards a planet, that has been
named as the Piton Star as it is in the general direction of St Lucia and after
the local brew that we feel that we'll have to try on arrival. Yes, there has
been a joke that we all hope that they'll be rum at the inn...sorry, really
bad I know!!!!! We also caught a fish, yes miracles do happen but we cannot say
that it was down to our lures or fishing abilities! In the early hours, we
suddenly hear this thud and yours truly embarassingly shreeks after suddenly
finding this flapping slimy object at my feet!! It was quite a sizable beastie
and would have given the helm (or anyone else) a sore head had it hit them! This
fish had flown out of a wave over the high side, probably a good 20ft! We've
seen them for the last 3 weeks leaping out of the waves and flying for 20+ feet
but fairly low to the water, so this one must have thought it was having a bad
day....all of this water and it lands on our deck. Before you all think that it
came to a grisly end in the hands of Clubber Bate, he showed his compassionate
side and despatched said fish back into the water to swim another day.
We also had another couple of squalls, very wet,
over 35 knots of wind, blah, blah, blah, I think you know everything there is to
know about them now so will not bore you with it again!
Conversations on deck have certainly moved over to
time/date of arrival, first drink, first meal etc.....I think everyone agrees
though that as long as it is cold and wet we don't care at the moment, just so
long as it isn't desalinated water. According to the chartplotter, we're 510
miles away from Rodney Bay, so basically 3.5 days from now....does that mean
we'll make happy hour on Thursday night? We'll have to see but I think
reasonably we're all looking at arriving on Friday morning. To be
honest this is good because our Intelligence
Officer (one of our shore team), who has provided vital position, translation
and general spying on the rest of the fleet info for us, is
flying in on Thursday night and would be there to take our lines (and also
share in the rum puches, isn't that right Jane?), it will certainly be the
case of the more the merrier for our welcome party!
We were all talking last night about the following
that we may have on this blog and wondering in how many countries we had spread,
has Tioram gone global? Maybe, maybe not, but hopefully this blog has given you
a small insight into the life out here on the open seas, during both
the good and bad times! We hope you've enjoyed following our progress and
hope that we can continue to make the final run into St Lucia as
entertaining.
Anyway more tomorrow, same place, same time. It's
32 deg at the chart table, so time to move up on deck and get into the
breeze.
Love to all back at home.
Al, Tina, Tony, Pat, Moira and
Mike.
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