Day 31
leeonsea
Lee Price
Fri 27 Jun 2008 17:21
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N41.04.36 W024.34.50
Heading 050T Wind Humph
To this point my sailing 'knowledge' has been based
on talking to other sailors, reading numerous books and researching a great deal
on the internet, I did not enter into this little escapade lightly. But now,
suplanting my bookish knowledge with actual experience I discover that much
of what I thought I knew was not based on real life.
There are plenty of 'experienced' sailors who will
tell you horror stories at the bar, usually in the third person 'I had this mate
of a mate who's friend was my uncles cousin' type story, you get the impression
that on every trip you'll ever make, you'll undoubtably get a good kicking for a
few days. No one ever says ' I spent a week becalmed in the Bay of Biscay '
well, tales of calm weather don't make for good stories do they?
Certainly the boat was bought prioritising certain
unplesent asspects of sailing, namely, heavy weather, Gales and Storms.
Certainly I have experienced gale force winds but in actual fact for no more
than 36hrs.......thus far. I accept I have at least 10days to go.
Nevertheless, looking back over the log I see that I have had winds, less
than 10kts (being the agreed minimum to sail by) for more than 50% of the time.
So the question has to be asked, what is the right
compromise when it comes to your boat choices? Not a question I suspect that has
yet been answered by even the best yacht designers and a question that will
remain unanswered for some considerable time to come. Certainly you wouldn't
want a boat that fell over at the first sign of a bad blow, or one that would
fall apart after only a few hours of heavy sailing. By the same token though,
you do want a boat.....I want a boat right now, that has a Rig about twice the
size of what I currently have, in order to make the most of this light
weather.
Of course, you'll never be able to sail a boat
faster than the wind you are sailing in, but to make the most of it would, at
the moment, be the most desired thing I could think I'd want in the whole wide
world.
The motor was shut down at 10pm, having desided
that after 24hrs under power, a night through the islands and a night on
the engine, I was in desperate need of some sleep. I slept well, in half hour
periods as normal, and feel greatly improved for it.
The fact is that I continued to crawl along at
2-3kts under Spinka only and this is quite litterally adding days to my
trip. The motor therefore went back on after breakfast and has been on all day.
I'm expecting to turn it off at about 11pm and drift along under Spinika again.
The wind has picked up by oh such a little bit as to hardly notice. The
Barometer remains 1010 and the Sun is out with not a cloud in the sky. There is
a bigger swell in the SW though and I take this as an encouraging sign for
better winds to come.
If I'm dead lucky I'll just scrape past the 1K mark
by midnight. I'm getting a little low on litrature and have only one last Orwell
novel to read having enjoyed A Clergymans Daughter and Burmese Days over the
past week or so. I'm currently on Coming Up For Air and it's interesting to read
these less known and frankly less good novels but see the direction in which his
writting developed to eventually come up with Animal Farm and 1984. I'm also
re-reading Carribean Passagemaking and can feel my itch burning and I'm not even
home yet!
By Jove what what.
L.
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