Fai Tira Blog 16.00 UTC  Wednesday 18th November

Fai Tira in the Atlantic.    23:13.07N 25:23.24W

I have had a request to include more sailing information in the blog so here you go.

Monday

I woke John up at seven am to realising that the wind had increased sufficiently enough for us to unfurl the genoa.  Unfortunately the wind was coming from the southwest which is the direction we needed to go to get to the fabled 20 / 30 turn point. We switched the engine off which was a great relief and started to sail.  I hit the sack as I had just finished my five hours watch.  After about thirty minutes John called and I got out of my bunk, an ominous cloud bank approached.  The wind increased and increased until we were zooming along at over seven knots close hauled with the gunnels in the water. Wow this was good; this is what it’s all about.  The wind increased more to about twenty eight knots, time for a reef I think to myself.  We do this heaved too which is the safest way to do the reefing.  The boat is more stable and it is easier to move around. We sailed reefed for about another two hours until the wind slowly deceased and we had to put the motor on yet again. We motored for the rest of the day and night worrying about all the fuel we were using up. We are using about three point five litres an hour and carry five hundred litres in the main tanks and two litres in jerry cans on the deck.

Yesterday Tuesday

We woke up to no wind at all.  So we decided to leave the other two boats Camomile and Lucy Alice in search of the some.  We didn’t succeed.  We headed south for a while but after studying the GRIB files once more we decided to carry on to 20 /30.  The motor hummed away all day but as night fell the wind veered around to the North West and we started to sail.  A few minor squalls came through overnight which increased our speed to over six knots which was great.  As dawn broke the North easterly trade winds had kicked in and we started to do some proper downwind sailing.  We had left the reef in the main from the day before so we goose winged the main and genoa, (for you that don’t know the genoa is the sail at the front of the boat and the main is the main sail attached to the back of the mast by the boom.  Goose winging is when you have one sail to port and the other to starboard).  We held this configuration all through the day were eating the miles up at a rate of over five knots per hour. I sat for about two hours on the bow sprit of Fai Tira whilst it ploughed its way through the huge rollers.  We kept this configuration all through the night although there came a time during the night when we could have done with taking the sails down.  The combination of light winds and big Atlantic swell leads to a severe rock and rolling motion which makes sleeping very uncomfortable if not impossible.

Today Wednesday

Saw us changing the sail plan.  As we were still going down wind we decided to leave the genoa poled out, drop the main sail and fly the cruising chute on the opposite side to the genoa using the boom of the mainsail as a pole to control the clew of the sail.  (You really need to see it)  The configuration worked really well and we covered lots of ocean until about 1400 hours when the wind dropped.  As I type this we are cruising along at a meagre four knots.  Boooo

John has just made some dough so looking forward to nice fresh bread with dinner tonight. 

That’s all for now, only another two and a half weeks to go before we get to Antigua.