Day 31 - Passage to the Caribbean
Misterx
Fri 2 May 2025 01:20
01/05/25
8:30 pm
Day 31
North Atlantic Ocean
DTD to Trinidad: 646 NM (125NM)
125 nm ! Even better mileage than yesterday... despite the wind going down a smidge... maybe something to do with the genoa we managed to put up, finally, mid afternoon! All went rather well, we'd had the main up and the working jib on a goose wing set up, which was good up until the wind dropped and the jib kept collapsing. The wind was going steady around 11 to 12 knots, and it suddenly went down to around 8 for a while, and the swell was very much reduced, so we took our chances.
The working jib went down first, Ian lashed it to the guard wire. We got the genoa up to the foredeck, heavy thing, Ian did the needful at the front, I did the needful at the back of the sail, sheets on, all tied up and secured. As Ian walked back to the cockpit to hoist the genoa, a huge pod of dolphins turned up out of nowhere... guess they heard on the grapevine that there would be entertainment... come and watch these humans, they unfolding a white wing, pretending to be birds, let's go and play in the wave at the front... we'll have a ball...
No time to gawpe today... Ian won't let me... he is ready to hoist and dolphins or no dolphins, we have the right amount of wind, this here genoa is going up now before the wind increases and makes it difficult or impossible even to pull it up, and it's about time too, given that we have waited days for the right conditions! So I need to concentrate and focus on the job at hand, feeding the sail into the furling system, much to my chagrin.... I did steal the occasional glance over the rail and it was just a joy to see them dive and race just below the surface in front of the bow... 5 or 6 abreast, trying to keep in the flow, then scattering, to be replaced by the next lot... It felt like it took age to hoist this enormous genoa. I am willing it to go up as quick as possible so I can just revel in the dolphins antics... By the time we have it all up, and furled, and I can finally take my eyes of the job to scan the waves, there is not a dolphin to be seen... they had just vanished... every single one of them... guess the entertainment was not as good as billed, they didn't even stay for the end of the performance... No round of applause for us!
So it's back to work then. Next we took down the main sail, no need for it now, it would only blanket the genoa, preventing the wind from filling it up properly. So we' re back to our favourite sail combo... genoa only! easy to get more sail out or shorten sail and still stonking at over 5.5 knots of boat speed, with peaks at 6 and above!
By the time we had done all this and tidied up the deck and cockpit, it was time for afternoon tea and a piece of lemon cake! Perfect!
Sponge Bob Square Pants is still doing a sterling job every 4 hours, we are still taking on the same amount of water in the bilge... And we had a particularly busy morning with the Sargasso, from sun up till about 11am we went through a very dense patch of seaweed, big rafts of them all around us, swishing their way to who knows where!
Watching the miles go down... we're nearly there!
M