Tradewinds sailing is fun.........
Associate3
Chris & Katie Russell
Sat 2 Dec 2017 19:32
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13:33.39N 36:20.26W
We are starting to find the balance between setting
Associate up for the night with a comfortable and manageable
rig whilst maintaining some speed and keeping too much sail up and
having all to get up to change it in the middle of the night. Last night we got
it wrong and found ourselves up to turn into wind to take down the mainsail in a
freshening wind and sea that had become rougher. We wont make the same mistake
tonight! We also need to be quicker to get ourselves into 'day' mode in the
mornings so that our average speeds climb quickly following a slower night.
Again - we have a plan and hopefully you will see us starting to move faster
sooner in the mornings. Although this morning was a shower and washing day as we
had a full tank of watermaker water so we were always going to be a bit tardy
anyway
It has been a glorious day's sailing today - with
13-15/18 knots of wind behind us running down deep blue seas 'goose winged'
in sunshine - a bit rolly but we seem to have become more used to it and have
bulked out the bunks so that one doesn't roll sideways with the boat. The only
issue with this is the heat as it is very hot down below and this makes the
bunks more restrictive. The problems of ocean sailing........
Other yachts have reported whales near their boats but
we have yet to see any - and today has been a bit low on the creature count -
just flying fish - one of which in the middle of the night managed to fly
through the cockpit past a startled David and into the cabin....it was
removed and sent packing but was a bit of a shock for us - and the fish
We continue to move further south of west as that
routing keeps us fairer winds for longer into next week with a long starboard
gybe up to St Lucia - we hope
We will have been at sea for 2 weeks at 13:00 tomorrow.
Later this evening we will hit the halfway mark - a very large milestone in our
minds - 1425 miles sailed and approximately the same to go. Its all counting
down now. We do not expect (hope) the second half to take anywhere as long as
the first half
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