Day 38 Position Report 04:49.153N 080:02.721E
Mark_needler
Professional Skipper
Mon 1 Oct 2007 06:50
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We have had three days of motor sailing, last night
around 1730 UTC we stopped the engine and have been sailing ever since our
current position is 0000 UTC (GMT to you none sailors). We are approximately
1100 miles outside of Langkawai,
Two days ago we had one of our large plastic
checked blocks exploded and shredded the sheet after it bent the front starboard
stanchion, luckily no one close to the block at the time, so no injuries
were sustained which was good.
The Stanchion is repairable and won't be noticeable
when completed. The sea is on the starboard aft quarter at the moment
with 15 to 20 knots from the same direction, and if the passage planner is
anything to go by it will be all the way to Langkawai, which doesn't make
sailing that comfortable but we are moving along nicely at about 7.3
knots.
We set off with another yacht 'El oro'
this is a 70ft Ocean racer which is a sister ship to
Creighton's Naturally, which as some of you will know competed in the
Whitbread round the world race some years ago.
A couple of days back we also had a problem with
the Autopilot, which found me crawling through the bowls of the boat trying to
find the cabling fault, this unfortunately was with no luck, but I did manage to
isolate the fault to a wind speed indicator that wasn't playing nicely with all
the other gauges and removed that from the cabling link and the Autopilot
started to work straight away. So we still have the autopilot at the moment but
no wind information, I'm guessing it's only a programming error, but it could
just be that the unit has failed, time will tell.
The Sri Lankian fishermen are being a pain in the
butt, they motor right across the bows of the boat and try to get us to stop to
buy stuff, but in this seaway it would result in damage to the boats and we have
everything we need on board, apart from the fishing lure that one of them rang
over with there propellers!, we still have a few left.
I'll send another position report in a couple of
days when hopefully we will be a lot closer to our destination.
Fair sailing, Mark
TM, I'll text you in day or
so.
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