Day 22...... The line awaits!
Zahara: The story so far......
Ron Dunn
Mon 14 Dec 2009 13:28
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Team effort for the last day....
Well, I (Ron) don't know what to say really. At the
moment we have just 59nm to St Lucia plus another 5 or so to the finish line.
The weather has been difficult these last couple of days with quite strong and
shifty winds and with showers and squalls coming through. This means we are
always adding or removing sail. We have been reasonably cautious as having too
much sail up as the squall hit could cause damage both to the boat and my bank
balance. So, more sail and speed when we are able and accepting a slower spell
when required. I think this approach has cost us a few miles each day but
breaking things would cost a lot more. We are looking at 22 1/2 days in total
which far exceeds my expectations when we started out. However, the constant
strong winds has helped the bigger boats so, even afetr handicaps are applied,
we won't have done too well. Do I care?....... Noooo!
We expect to be moored up sometime this evening and
the prospect is quite unreal. I'm not sure I believe this is happening at the
moment as we are still doing all the practical things and we need to make sure
that in all the euphoria we don't go in without fenders etc! Sometime this
afetrnoon St Lucia should appear over the horizon, maybe then I'll start to
believe....
Over to Larry ....
Well, caution or not, it's just hit the pocket!
Whilst Ron was finishing his bit above, a big squall came through and broke one
of the whisker poles (sticky out thing like a spinnaker pole). We then had fun
between squalls detaching the pole (which by this stage was trying to break the
hatch on the foredeck) from the mast and sail.
Still, job done and now wait for the latest Squall
to clear before resetting the sails to match the new configuration. In the
meantime, we're headed toward the finish line with the loss of about one knot of
speed.We'll try to recoup that in about 30 mins when time it's fit to get on the
foredeck
again.
Whatever happens, the line isn't far away, and I
think it is fair to say that it will be very welcome!
We'll enter the results on the blog tomorrow, when
we've recovered.
Larry and Ron
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