Arc Day 4 - Baking Day

Tucanon
Dick and Irene Craig
Thu 26 Nov 2009 10:13
This morning, at 3am, we could see the lights from two other boats. One was about eight nautical miles behind us and the other about ten nautical miles ahead of us, both on our port side.

Within the hour, the light behind us could no longer be seen but we did get as close as six nautical miles to the other boat, the lights of which disappeared about 5.30am.

Some ten miles, directly ahead of us, a boat showed on the radar and we gradually closed in on it until, by 6am, we were six nautical miles apart.

About 2am, the wind strengthened and was gusting up to 27knots. Reducing the height of the parasailor also reduced our speed but was better for the sail.

At 9am we were hitting 16.5 knots, our best speed ever.

I reckon that if we maintain an average speed of 7knots from this point, we should arrive at Rodney bay December 8th. Austin and Chris are much more optimistic and think that we should average 8knots and arrive December 7th.

We passed THOR VI, rally number 190 at precisely 10am. Our position at that time was 23 19 60N 21 13 35W. See photo "THOR VI".

Dick showed Chris and Austin how to switch on the water maker and just as important, how to switch it off, allowing the extra time necessary for the fresh water flush, before turning off the generator. See photo "What's in here?"

Today is a baking day and the rock cakes and the flap-jacks have been replenished. Unfortunately, due to an unexpected movement of the boat, nothing to do with the unfortunate choice of places to put the tray of cakes, a third of the rock cakes ended up on the floor. They are now fish food.

Bob, the skipper on Pipistrelle, was unable to host Group B net today as he had problems on his main sail. Chris was delighted to stand in for him, happy to get involved in the radio net on occasions other than when the responsibility falls on Tucanon. It isn't our turn again until Sunday.

We had salad again for lunch today with salami and feta cheese, plus home-made wholemeal bread. Tonight will be curry night unless we manage to catch a fish, in which case we will have barbecued fish with limes.

We can always cook the chicken madras tomorrow and serve it with cashews, chopped apple, sliced bananas and rice.

The electricity for the 220v units, switched itself off twice today, for as yet, an undiscovered reason.

We think we might have a water leak as we seem to be using an extraordinary large amount of water. All the obvious places have been checked. Perhaps we are just being greedy with the water. We will continue to monitor the situation.

Irene

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