Day 5 - Channel Racing.
Jacana
David Munro
Wed 14 Jan 2009 19:47
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Day five and we're cruising along the North
Namibian coast some 300 miles off shore with a steady 20 knot breeze sometimes
gusting to 25 knots. We have a large following sea making life very interesting.
During the night in a lull we hoisted the big grey runner and headed north of
the Rhum line to keep a healthy distance between ourselves and the high which is
re-establishing itself in the middle of the South Atlantic.
David spends time looking at the grib files which
we download twice a day in an attempt to find the best routing for the boat. We
have lost touch with the other competitors in the fleet,with us being
pretty much the slowest rater, their routing may be irrelevant to ours. We have
also lost touch with them as we havn't heard from race control for a couple of
days and have no idea where they are. In many respects as each day goes
past the other competitors seem less important, we are racing the boat as fast
as we can in our own small world.
We are not on any shipping route and havn't seen
another vessel since sunday when a freighter went past on the horizon, the
closest we have passed a vessel since has been at 12 miles occording to the AIS
system on-board.
As the wind grew during the night we decided to
take the big grey runner down and managed to get it wrapped around the forestay
- note to self, don't try to drop the kite when it is collapsed on an asymetric.
We ran for a few hours with jib only whilst we sorted ourselves out and at first
light hoisted our heavy runner which is much more forgiving and suitable to the
conditions. We ran all day some 30 degrees high of the Rhum line being the best
angle we could get.
We are all members of the 16knot club except Paul
who could only manage 15. John has the record with a sustained 17.8 knots
down the back of an enormous wave - boat boat took off with everyone hanging on.
As the evening approached we gybed back onto a westerly course and are now
charging along in total darkness on the space ship Jacana.
Nature watch.
Visited again today by Albatross.
A single flying fish took off as we ripped down a
wave
Something yet to be identified growing between
Chris's toes.
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