Day 15 - Its a hot one!
Jacana
David Munro
Sun 25 Jan 2009 21:24
|
Last night we felt the heat as the sun set, the
breeze was steady and warm - we were on deck all night in T-shirts for the first
time in the trip. We carried the Pink & Grey runner all night and made good
progress towards the finish. We had been hopeful of a 200 mile day but dropped
below the magic figure of 8 knots during the night for too long resulting in a
commendable 185 mile day. The night sky was clear allowing us to star gaze
without any light polution, there was no moon either making the stars seem
brighter still. An hour before the dawn saw the first of three squalls pass us
by, the only indication of them are dark patches in the stars and the freshening
of the wind, having a little more experience of them, we kept the spinnaker
flying, coming down to a broad angle in the puffs. By first light there was a
clear horizon and a freshening breeze - down came the light runner, up went
Olive who remained up all day and into the evening where we managed a 100 mile
run in 12 hours.
For those of you wondering what a grib file is,
there is a picture of one attached showing the wind direction lines depicting
strength and direction in the area you happen to be. They predict the weather
forward for upto a week in advance so that you can make routing decisions,
either avoiding bad weather or seeking out the best winds. All the boats racing
in this race use a Grib service to avoid the dead patches where there is no or
little wind. The gribs for the remainder of the race suggest that we have fair
winds for the run into Salvadour - we havn't opened the last packet of Smash in
celebration just yet in case they're wrong.
The mutiny over the removal of cushions from the
cockpit at sunrise rumbles on and hasn't been helped by "Rudge" E-mailing the
boat suggesting wheel barrow inner tubes as the ideal solution - where was Rudge
before we left Cape Town?? Rudge goes on to advise that "Kwik Fit" do a very
good delivery service - not that good I suspect. Today it was too hot to sit in
the cockpit, the decks burnt the soles of feet - the bare chested rail
fodder sculked below moaning about the heat, you just can't please some
people. At one point this afternoon there was a scuffle for the shadiest place
under the bimini, Chris won as he still hasn't changed his shorts. (see attached
picture)
We were perhaps a little quick to blame the water
boy for over filling the water containers and flooding the bilges as we have now
discovered a water leak on the starboard tank which floods the bilges, also
explains why there is never any water in the starboard tank. As a result, we
have stripped open Paul's bunk under which is the water tank. We politely
waited for him to wake up and then politely waited for him to get up, then
we impolitely turfed him out after we could wait no longer. Water leak was
found, the pipe work stripped out and repaired, the system put back together
again, tested and signed off as another successful piece of routine maintenance.
The water boy is back on full rations and an extra tot of grog.
Nature watch
Flying Fish Fry ( try saying that after one of
David's cocktails)
|
