49 09 228N 19 37 682W - 19 July
Dearloves
Wed 19 Jul 2006 16:02
|
We are having a minor celebration on board, as we
have been away for one year today. We flew to Italy, (with a spinnaker
weighing 24 kilos) courtesy of Ryan Air from Stansted Airport, on 19 July
2005.
Last night was much calmer - the waves subsided and
we have a nice 15-20 knot breeze. We shook out all the reefs at
10.30pm. When Charlie took over from Mark at 5.00am they put the spinnaker
up as the wind had gone aft of the beam. Juliet was called out of bed at
7.00am to take the spinnaker down - it was so cold that it was a case of
grabbing wet weather gear, boots and lifejacket, clicking the autohelm 15
degrees to leeward, letting off the guy so that Charlie on the foredeck could
snub the sail, letting off the pole uphaul and downhaul, gradually releasing the
spinnaker halyard, returning the autohelm to course and then racing back
below to the warmth of her bed. Fortunately it is a well-practised drill
by now.
Strangely enough, after all that wind, we are now
motoring through a zone of no wind at all! This morning we received
emailed grib files of weather forecasts, showing that the low that we thought we
had seen the back of, is on its way south, back towards us for another go!
Very weird. Currently we have around 500 miles to go to Bishop Rock.
We covered 171 miles in the 24 hours to 12.00 local time.
Some stats for Penman, about our year away, as
requested:
-currently logged over 11000 miles from Italy -top speed 16.4 knots, set on the ARC with the spinnaker up -highest recorded gust whilst sailing 55 knots (however mast was nearly horizontal at the time so anemometer was under-reading) -longest time at sea - 19 days
-59 chucks from Alice -12 chucks from Pip -0 from Juliet and Charlie -2 from guests, one courteousy of Nick Deacon (who inspected the contents and was pleased to note that all nutrition had already been taken from that evening's meal) and one from Victoria Romero (although she was pregnant at the time) -79 different places stopped at (so far) -3 baths each
-various items lost overboard, including Charlie's
sunglasses, one game-boy, top half of Pip's bikini, half a windsurfer mast,
various t-towels and pegs
-new skills - astral navigation for Charlie; bread
and sushi making for Juliet; knots, game-boy, beading and surfing talk for
Alice; rowing and Connect-4 for Pip
-haircuts - 2 each -shaves for Charlie - 8 (200 razors brought out by
David still in cupboard)
-1 green flash each
-numerous great friends
-253 bottles of wine
-29 bottles of rum
-1000 cans of beer
-2kgs of Marmite
-most listened to CD - "20 Novelty No 1's"
(including "Ernie", "Agadoo", "Crazy Frog" and "I'm too Sexy" - thanks to
Katharine H-J for that leaving present!!!)
From here it will take us 2-3 days to get to the
Scillies, we will have a couple of days there and then go on to Falmouth where
we will spend a couple of days, then up to Suffolk.
We have had dolphins playing at the bow this
morning, which was lovely. A couple of nights ago we had them playing
around the boat at night, in the phosphoresence, for around 2 hours. They
always lift the spirits.
 Alice and Pip have again coped very well with being
stuck on the boat for days on end. This morning Alice has been playing
game-boy and Pip has been playing Frustration. Unable to find anyone to
play it with her, she enlisted some teddies to play. Looks like the dolphins may
have the upper hand.
 Charlie and Mark have been advising a boat that we
met in Horta, via email, on their engine troubles. They have set sail for
Denmark with a new engine, which has proved problematic and there is no engineer
on board.
|