Its never as easy as you expect!
The Adventures of Allegria & Crew
Peter Lansdale
Sun 11 Jan 2026 16:14
164 miles sailed in the last 24 hours.
So, I mentioned in yesterday's blog that we intended to swap the head-sails around ie move the jib from starboard to port, and vice-versa for the genoa. Easy to say, but turned out to be much harder in practice! There are a lot of ropes involved, as well as other ropes (such as the sail sheets, not involved as such, but nevertheless, in the mix, each of which must not be tangled up with or crossed over another rope. It is very hard to see if you have got this right until you raise the pole and re-unfurl the sail. If something is wrong, the sail must be refurled, the pole brought back in and the offending ropes re routed. These are long and heavy ropes and all this is being done on a very bouncy, rolling foredeck! I think its fair to say Peter needs a more competent crew as it took us over 90 mins to get it sorted and we were exhausted at the end of it! (Or we need a skipper who can give better instructions, says Peter). Hopefully we will improve with practice!
It was pretty windy right up till around mid-night (around 20 knts) with a big, very rolly sea. Cooking, eating dinner, showering and even sleeping was challenging. Since then the wind has abated and the waves are better. We're making good progress though.
2 more schools of dolphins have been with us this morning and we have seen a couple of birds which we are unable to indentify. Their wings look a bit like swallow wings, but probably a bit bigger. They stayed close to water, skimming over the waves.
We decided we needed to lower the pole of the genoa this morning to get it to set a little better and this turned out to a much smoother operation and we hope it will give us an extra fraction of knot.
Milla