Arc Day 2 - Unplanned MOB Drill

Tucanon
Dick and Irene Craig
Tue 24 Nov 2009 15:52
Our supper last night, of spaghetti bolognese, was ready at the appointed
hour but unfortunately, due to an increase in the force of the wind, it was
delayed somewhat, while we put two reefs in both the mainsail and the genoa.

At 9am on day two, we were averaging 7.5knots. Our fasted speed since
leaving Las Palmas was 15.2knots, at least two knots less than the speed
reported by a couple of other catamarans. The highest wind-speed 33knots.

Most of the boats seem to have headed in a more westerly direction than us,
though a few others have taken a similar route to ourselves.

At the end of my watch, at midnight, I could only see the navigation lights
of four other ARC boats. They were all ahead of us. The closest by 2nm.

Breakfast was home-made pancakes.

We have bought four basil plants in the belief that we have a better chance
of arriving in Rodney bay with at least one of the plants alive, if we
quadruple the odds.

Two of the basil plants, Annie and Bonnie, currently live in the galley.
Connie is pretending to be a palm tree and is providing some shade for the
"babies". See photograph "Basil palm tree". Danny is being really macho,
located beside the wet bar in the aft cockpit.

The rod, on the port side of the sail bag, is trying to wriggle free. It
wont be the first one to try. We lost its predecessor in the Aegean, July
2007.

During one of his inspections, Austin identified a screw which was working
its way lose. This he rectified immediately.

Then, we had to undertake a man overboard rescue operation when the Jonbuoy
was accidentally activated.

The next problem was the water heater which was fusing the electrical supply
so Dick had to dismantle our bed, drain the hotwater tank and replace the
element. In the course of moving some wine from under the floor, two bottles
toppled over and broke. They hadn't got yheir sea legs yet. The bouquet set
off the gas alarm.

Today, lunch was delayed because Chris, in his role as Net controller, was
calling all the boats in our group. He didn't want me to use the electric
oven until he had completed his session at 2pm, in case it caused
interference with the SSB.

Lunch would have been delayed even if Chris hadn't asked me not to use the
oven because something seemed to go wrong with the electrical supply and the
Victron controllers were broken while trying to investigate the problem. Not
that they worked very well since they had been replaced while we were in
Gibraltar because the units sent to replace those which were not compatible
initially, were not the correct units and didn't enable us to set them to
the level that we required. We had hoped that this problem would be
rectified while we were in Las Palmas but Victron didn't get it sorted in
time despite being aware that we were in Las Palmas for over four weeks.

Lunch was well worth waiting for, when home-made pizza with loads of
scrumptious toppings, was finally presented at 3pm.

While Chris was still involved with the net, dolphins came to visit our boat
but later, mid afternoon, we were all able to greet a pod of around 30
dolphins which cavorted around the hulls for at least twenty minutes before
disappearing into the sea.

Supper was another one of those good old, easy to cook meals. This time in
the form of chilli con carne, follwed by a caramel pudding. I have to admit
that the pudding had been purchased at Morrisons in Gibraltar.

Irene

JPEG image