A very rough night

ALICE'S ADVENTURES
ANDREW AND CELIA SHARPE
Thu 9 Dec 2010 11:57
We have just had a very rough night with seas over
20ft high. We altered course hoping for a calm night with just the
mainsail up but things just got worse! The wind was 20-25 knots with gusts
of up to 37. The boat has been tossed about from side to side
and front to back and corkscrewing. Nobody got much sleep. The
squalls kept on coming! We are now on a different tack with the main
and well reefed genoa tanking along at 7 to 8 knots. 482 miles
to the finish which we still hope to make on Sunday. In our 24 hours until
13.00 UTC yesterday we had our best day of 203 miles on the log. Our worst
was last Wednesday when we did 123.
Emailing has been really useful and hopefully will
save a lot of time getting things fixed. Thank you very much indeed to
David Day (our shore based crew) for sourcing the parts that we need and to Dave
Hancock of BDA Marine at Swanwick who has been ordering them. And then to
Lizzie for having to bring them out in her luggage.
Last nights dinner was a joint effort in the galley from
Roger and Celia - marinated pork steaks (delicious - from the meat market in Las
Palmas) with ratatouille (tinned) and mashed potatoes (instant).
Everything has to be quick and easy as the galley is continually
moving.
Glad to hear that class 4ES at St Aldehelms School are
getting excited about our countdown to arrival. It has been lovely to
know that there are so many people are following our
progress.
ALICE
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