Fai Tira Blog 16.00 UTC  Friday 4nd December

Fai Tira in the Atlantic nearly at Antigua .   17:12.48N 60:33.34W

Well we are nearly there, with less than one hundred miles to run.  The last couple of days have seen the wind pick up as the “trades” establish themselves around the Azores high pressure.  Our sail plan is working well and we are still goose winged.  The only down side to this is that Fai Tira doesn’t like going directly downwind and maintain her speed which is what we need to do to arrive before customs close at 4pm tomorrow.  So this morning at 7am local time we decided to fly the spinnaker again.  The wind was a little stronger than the last time we flew “the kite” but we thought we could handle it.  The process for flying the kite is quite long winded and tiring, on a boat that is pitching and rolling through 170 degrees.  It is so long winded I am going to bore you with it.  First we furl the Genoa by pulling it in by hand.  (Posh boats have electric winches and furling gear).   Then we furl the stay sail. The engine is started and we hook up Angela our tiller pilot automatic steering gear.  The boat is then headed to wind and the main sail dropped. (We have found the spinnaker is a lot more stable without the main sail blanking it). With the engine now pushing us downwind we put the spinnaker pole in the correct position and raise “the kite”.  “The kite” has what’s called a snuffer on it, this is a sleeve that envelopes the sail and allows us to open “the kite” in a controlled way. Once up, it is down to trimming and getting the thing flying properly.  Well that’s all there is to it.  The whole process takes about 30 minutes. The racing sailors out there are laughing now.  Anyway this morning saw us with “the kite” flying which increased our speed to 6.5 knots. That was until the wind got up and the line that goes through the pole pulled out.  Bugger Bugger Bugger.  I ran to the bow of Fai Tira and shouted to John to release the red line.  He did but the boat swung across the wind and we were in a mess.  I then shouted to John to release the green line which then deflated the sail enough to allow me to pull the snuffer down, but not after we both suffered rope burns to our hands.  (we normally always use gloves when flying the cruising shute or spinnaker).  So we then went through the process of taking the whole thing down and reverting to goose winging again.  Thoroughly knackered now we sat down with a cup of tea for me whilst John sipped cold water.  The upside of the whole exercise was that the wind kept on increasing all day so if we hadn’t of dropped “the kite” then we would probably of never got it down.  Because we are back to goose winging we have been varying from just above the Rhumb line to just below it, a sort of zigzag en-route to Antigua. 

We have been looking at arrival times a and if the wind stays with us pushing Fai Tira onward to our goal of Jolly Harbour on the West side of the island we should be there tomorrow (Saturday) afternoon.  The chart tells us we are now sailing in the Caribbean Sea and not the Atlantic.  There has been little or no change to the fluidity of the ocean other than it’s a tad warmer.  We have not seen any wild life other than flying fish for days now.  Hopefully the Caribbean Sea will change all that.  We have seen a couple of ships go by so we have to be a little more vigilant with our watches.  Yes we now have the AIS switched on permanently. I think I have explained the AIS to you before but for those who don’t know the Automatic Identification System (AIS) transmits our position and receives other ships positions and displays them on the chart plotter.  For those of you who don’t know what a chart plotter is!!!!!!!!!!   He He.  We can set a two mile safety zone around Fai Tira and any ship entering that zone sounds an alarm.  This can be quite useful when you fall asleep on watch at 2 o’clock in the morning. 

Anyway this is our last night at sea until after New Year celebrations, we are both looking forward to a undisturbed night’s sleep not to mention those RUM punches. 

PARTY ON.