Day thirteen - clocks going back
Adonde
Neil & Tracy Batcheler
Sun 31 Dec 2006 17:08
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Noon position 17:26.8N 36:38.2W
Day's run 125nm
As predicted, when the gennaker was taken down last
night to be replaced with the genoa our speed dropped right off. We cheated a
bit by running one engine for most of the night as the batteries were getting a
little low and in need of a charge, and this helped push us along but still a
disappointing day's run. In a new spirit of
let's-pull-our-fingers-out-or-we'll-never-bloody-get-there togetherness we
hoisted the gennaker at 0800, into a very slight breeze. Harrumph. The wind
stayed light all morning and has only recently perked up a bit so now we're
making reasonable speed, only, I fear, to slow down again overnight. On the plus
side, we reckon we're now over half way to Barbados and cold beer, with only
(only? Did I say only?!) 1325nm to go. Say it quickly and it doesn't
sound far.
Something we hadn't really considered or indeed
bothered to find out about was what to do about time on the boat. I don't mean
what to do with our time, that's a separate problem, but what time to work to.
The Canary Islands, for some reason, use UTC (GMT) so we were on the same time
zone as the UK. But of course as we head further west we find that it's staying
lighter longer and getting lighter later. As far as we can deduce, clocks
need to be turned back by one hour for every 15 degrees of longitude you pass
through. So now we have two times on board: UTC (GMT) is used for the noon
position and radio scheds, and local time (currently two hours before UTC) for
our watch system. Some boats we know stick to UTC for the whole trip and
adjust it in one go at the other end but that only really works if you're
running a watch system 24 hours a day (usually with a larger crew) which we're
not. We share the responsibilities during the day, and at 2000 start a three
hours on / three hours off watch system until 0800, which seems to work OK but
you can see that if we stuck to UTC eventually we'd get all out of whack and be
sleeping in daylight and both up in the dark. Not that we're not sleeping in
daylight as well but you get the picture.
We're still having trouble maintaining radio
contact with the other boats, apparently they can hear us but we can't hear
them, but Lena (the Swedish boat I told you about, do try and keep up) is acting
as go-between and relaying messages so it's no real problem, just a bit
frustrating.
We don't have any New Year revelry planned, not
least because one of us will be asleep at midnight (UTC and local!). We
hope you all have a good one - at least our heads won't be sore
tomorrow!!
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