Day 9 - Monday morning at the office.
Jacana
David Munro
Mon 19 Jan 2009 21:55
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Familiarity breeds contempt so they say, monday
morning didn't see the sun rise on the perfect morning, rather a dark and
menacing sky approaching from behind. During the hours of darkness we had a very
steady sail with an average of 13 knots of breeze pushing us along a course
close to the Rhum line at around 7 knots. The pink and grey light runner was on
display, the seas were calm and we all slept like babies off watch. We slept so
well that it was very difficult to wake up when we came on watch.
Jacana's watch system is simple in a complicated
sort of way, we each have four hour staggered watches with two people on
watch at any one time. The four hour on and off watches run through the night
and day, in order to avoid standing the same watch each night, we have
two 2 hour dog watches in the evening. David & John are on opposite
watches, Paul & Chris are on opposite watches, the system works well now
that we have had 9 days to practice it.
The morning saw a number of squalls come through,
the first missing us by a mile or two. We dropped the pink & grey as the
wind started to gust to 19 knots and veered through 90 degrees, we unfurled the
headsail and reached away to see what the squall would bring. In the event, we
saw winds that went little over 20 knots. Anticipating the direction and
strength was the game of the day with regular large shifts and strengths
building from 5 knots to 20 knots in a few minutes - it seemed that we always
had the wrong headsail up and Chris again exceeded his reasonable quota of kite
packs. By early afternoon things had settled down with a steady 11 knot breeze,
once we had mastered the sail settings, we managed to get a good speed using
"Big Olive" as she has now been re-named. (she's more an Olive than a
grey). However things are never static for long out here and sure enough the
wind started dying to leave us wallowing in just a few knots of breeze by tea
time. Painstakingly the boat speed has to be built up by sailing towards what
little wind there is and then, when the boat is moving, it must be turned to
point as near as possible to our destination. By sunset the wind had again
filled in and we were making good speed on 290 degrees which is the bearing to
Salvador. There was no sun to day, we could see blue sky on the horizon but
never manged to sail fast enough to catch it. All we saw of the sun was it's
setting!! (see attached)
Settling down for the evening and pressing buttons
on the B&G Remotevision (a wireless device for controlling the boats
electronic instruments) suddenly the pilot powered down and the boat crash
gybed. She immediately hove to with the main sail holding her head up and the
spinnaker pushing her bows down. Much releasing and pulling of ropes to get
her to gybe back proved fruitless. Eventually ( perhaps 10 minutes later), going
into what was bound to be a difficult spinnaker drop, she started moving through
the water and responding to the helm and eventually was persuaded to come back
to the proper orientation to the wind. The spinnaker filled and we were off
again. A somewhat apprehensive inspection fortunately revealed no damage except
the loss of one of David's many pairs of glasses..
The good news on the race course in the past 24
hours is that Jacana covered good miles thus reducing the lead some of our
competitors have over us. The bad news is that we are reducing our deficit on
our closest rated competitors at a rate that would take almost two months to
catch up! As we move into the middle section of the race, we have to keep
the boat moving at all costs in the light winds and hope that luck and mother
nature deliver us some favourable winds.
How not to sterilize a milk making container - see
attached photograph!
Nature Watch
Its a desert out here - one bird with flappy wings
came to inspect us at tea-time - new model not spotted
before.
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