Oh What a Night!
Nakesa
Wed 13 Jun 2012 12:57
|
S11 20 W134 20
Oh What a Night! It was all very quiet and gentle on the
Applins pleasure yacht, that was until last night...... in 10 knots decided
to keep the cruising chute up and all going well until tack line chafed at
around 0400 and we had to get a tangled mess of multi coloured sail on
deck. An hour this morning untangling things and on re-setting I reckoned I had
cracked it....run the sheet through a block at the end of the boom and steer
exactly 150 degrees off the wind and ..Presto, 8 knots and a stable
sail.......SORTED!!!!
We ran like this all day and into the evening.. I
started calculating optimistic arrival times as we touched 10 knots... and
thought about how drama free the trip had been so far (never do
this) but then......just as we were sitting down to dinner our first
real squall of the trip passed through..heavy rain and 35 knots of
wind from the SSE...a 15 knot surf..a broach and our spinnaker became a multi
coloured trawling net...we were just left with the tapes giving us the perfect
outline of the sail that was no longer there and a lap full of spaghetti.!!!!!
Up on foredeck again and a half hour of heroically hauling in wet sail
cloth.
The wind passed through and so here we are
back here again at 7 knots with our 'sensible' sails up and a cracked
autopilot bracket to boot! So settling down to more movies and I
guess it will be Friday morning after all!...which means Aston gets the $20 (and
I have the runners up $1000 or repairs..serve me right for being
impatient)!!
Dolphins played around the bow for an hour this evening, Aston and Atlanta
sat in the bows watching them as we bowled along, with them criss crossing in
front of us..a great welcom to this side of the Pacific.
All good fun and drama on high seas and only
275miles to go....
The other big issue aboard is my facial hair
situation..I started trying to be a proper old sea dog and I fought off all that
itchyness and complaints from No1 and No3 about scratchy kisses (titter ye not!)
and kept a rather impressive full set of whiskers...until yesterday when
inspired by our three musketeers movie I did the moustach and funny bit on the
chin deal....apparently I looked like a pirate (EXCELLENT) and P started calling
me D'artagan but in our nightime foredeck frolic with me shouting orders No1
said...quote 'You looked like such a prat I wanted to hit
you!'. So today not feeling quite the swarthy swordsmith I got
rid off the little chin bit........ now they think I look like Leslie Phillips
or Terry Thomas (I was going for Errrol Flynn). Oh well ding
dong......!!!!
Happy sailing all..
Graham
SY Nakesa
|