Day 18 - Almost but not quite
Jacana
David Munro
Wed 28 Jan 2009 22:12
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Best laid plans and all that, Jacana carried
Olive all night in a pleasant 14 knot breeze on the south gybe to build a good
angle for the approach to Salvadour on the promised Easterlies for today. The
plan seemed to be working when early morning we gybed back onto the northerly
gybe and managed to lay Salvadour in one run. Unfortunately for us the wind
gradualy went round into the south and slowly died away to an 11 knot breeze
- which ever gybe we were on we were either 25 degrees to high or too low
of the line. This continued all day - the cold beer for the following day we
promised ourselves looked less and less likely as the day wore on, we can only
hope our competitors are finding equally frustrating conditions! Late in the
afternoon we changed down from Olive to the light weight pink and grey runner
with light sheets, the kite set well but needed continuous trimming to make it
set in the light conditions. We have less than 200 miles to run, we have to keep
our patience and keep getting the best out of the boat. With luck, we should be
in tomorrow, but not until late in the evening.
The temperatures soared again today making deck
work very unpleasant, there is a high humidity and from 11.00am to 3.00 pm,
there is nowhere to hide. Everyone except John brought some reading material
onboard and in the heat the books have come out as means to pass the time of
day. David is reading a novel written by an artist from Salvadour about the life
& times of a small village south of Salvador set in the twenties around the
cocoa boom period when civilisation was coming to the area. Paul was offered the
book to read but said it was not his "cup of tea", prefering instead a book
about Ghengis Kahn which Chris brought aboard. Paul has gone through the most
reading material, having chucked one self help book over the side, he has
partially read the second book he bought with him as well as a GQ mag. Paul's
reading technique is called the advanced speed reading method where he basically
starts at the back of the book and works his way forward. For those of us who
start at the front of the book and work back, this seems rather odd, however,
there is logic as Paul is keen to quiz us on what happened in the early chapters
thus saving him time and effort. His system is flawed when there is no-one
around who is reading the same book.
Because of this newly found interest a
literary club now meets under the bimini at dusk to discuss the writing
techniques, plot structures and character development of the Ghengis Kahn book
we are all reading at the same time. It's a little like a book time share and
Chris has been very good about it.
In light of what was supposed to be our last night
at sea, we decided to bake a cake in celebration of the almost complete crossing
of the South Atlantic. (recipe courtesy of John's mum) We were perhaps a
little premature as it turned out but there is a photo attatched. The cake was
large enough for afternoon tea (read cocktails using brandy and the juice from
the peach tin) as well as evening desert.
Our body clocks are coping well with the fact that
the sun goes down approximately 12 minutes later each day from when we started.
The dawn patrol watch (0200 to 0600) when we started out has turned into
just another night watch and supper is getting later and later each day. There
was a debate yesterday when Paul prepared dinner according to the Northern
tradition around 1830. Given the time distortion caused by our progress west,
this was three hours before sunset. After detailed analysis the meal was
reclassified as a "late lunch". A few days ago there was a
suggestion to alter our watches to Brazilian time which is 4 hours
ahead of Cape Town time (2 ahead of GMT) to avoid this type of confusion but
some of us who have only just managed to get to grips with the watch system
thought the learning curve too steep to start all over again.
Nature watch
One flappy winged bird with orange
beak.
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