Day 15
Zahara: The story so far......
Ron Dunn
Mon 7 Dec 2009 16:07
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Hi good readers, the Skipper is
back....
I thought that the days would realy drag out here
but, far from it. We have a well established routine now . First of all we talk
about how we can best optomise course and speed etc. Then we do safety
checks (especially trying to identify areas where 'chafe' might occur) then it's
looking at the systems on board and making sure there is enough in the batteries
to run everything. It sounds grand for a 29 footer but we do have quite a
lot of high tech stuff here and it is quite power hungry. I reckon on running
the engine to charge the batteries about 1 hour each day and that seems to be
sufficient along with the Solar cells, but we still have to turn things off to
conserve power ( sadly the fridge fallls into this catagory so no cold beer!).
Then it's banging away on the PC, writing the
blog, sending and replying to e mails, getting weather downloads and also the
various data which ARC control send us. Then there's cleaning, garbage
disposal and cooking.... Usually we try and get some sleep at some stage
but It's very warm now and that isn't easy.
The weather is still absolutely wonderfull and we
are hoping this might see us through to the end. We have passed another
milestone with under 1,000 nm now to go. We have started thinking about arriving
in Rodney bay and, I have to say, the thought of level ground, cold beer and a
shower (apart from the continuous partying!) is becoming very appealing!
We are still having our little friendly race at the
back. There are three boats under 30ft and, obviously we will be last to
arrive but we are still very close and it does make life more interesting. The
overall positions for the whole fleet will be arrived at via a handicap system
and, as always, there are some very strange handicaps with some people
happier than others. As for me, I just want to beat the other two
tiddlers....
'Cantare' and 'Ranja'. The weather has suited the
bigger boats with some very ast times recorded so I don't suppose we'll figure
very highly in the final positions.
More from Larry tomorrow.
Ron
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