(Blog No 36) A wet fish in the night!
Catou
Paul and Sylvie Tucker
Mon 6 Dec 2010 14:15
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15:20.08N
35:19.18W
Monday 6th December (Day 15)
Noon Position: 15 deg 20'N 35 deg
19'W
Daily Run: 117'
Av. Speed: 4.88 Knots
Total Av Speed: 4.61 Knots
Total Distance covered: 1662'
Distance to go: 1491'
No. of motoring hours: 56.9 hours
Saying for the day: " The beatings will continue,
until moral improves" - Thanks to our co-director Steve Wilkes for that
one!
Wow! What a surprise at 2300 hrs last
night! I was steering manually, and as I stood up to try and see the
dolphins (that I could hear swimming alongside 'Catou') I was suddenly hit
in the chest by a flying fish! Don't know who was more surprised, the fish
or me! We have had several on deck (including one that flew over Sylvie's
head and into the folds of a reef in the mainsail the other night).
Yesterday afternoon, we again had frustratingly
light winds, and we could only manage about 3 knots average all afternoon.
What ever we did, she wouldn't go faster!. In the late afternoon, we had
our usual tow behind the boat and a shower before opening the
champagne to celebrate the 1/2 way point. At exactly 1900 hrs I
photographed the GPS that showed 1574' covered and 1574' to go! You can't get
more 1/2-way than that! Almost as soon as we had finished an evening meal,
we noticed the wind was steadying up from NE and increasing. At last! The
Trades are coming. We had a fast night sail, but we manually steered all
night, since we were close to a point of gybing (which is dangerous!) and we
didn't trust the Hydrovane to steer accurately enough on such a dangerous point
of steering. We were sailing along at 7 - 8 knots for much of the night,
so we managed to push our daily average up to a reasonable 4.88 knots for the 24
hours to Noon today.
By the way, for anyone who is checking the ARC figures
with our own daily figures (given at the top), the reason for the difference in
distances, is because we are now 1 hour behind GMT, so our 'noon' is at 1pm your
time in UK. We will soon be changing the clocks back another hour to 2
hours behind, as we move further westwards each day.
Nothing else to report today. Best
wishes Ben, Paul and Sylvie aboard Catou.
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