Friday 2nd December
Nowcrew
Fri 2 Dec 2005 10:36
In position
19.17N 46.07W
Maintenance
day
As daylight broke we
looked out on a grey rainy ocean. We had a momentary 40 knot squall which Dave
and Ron handled without hassle (it's amazing how a couple of weeks in an ocean
can knock a crew into shape)
Then the wind died
and we had to fire up the engine again.
By 9.30 after a Tom
special beans on toast (skin heads on a raft) with cheese (insisted on by
Charlie something to do with pining for the saddle) the rain had stopped and we
were blessed with a beautiful blue-sky-morning with little motion from the ocean
it was quite pleasant - even though we were motoring.
We took the
opportunity to refuel decanting our last 88 litres of diesel into the main
tanks. We now have three quarters of a tank for motoring , which should
give us about 25 more hours under the iron sail (if needed). And three quarters
of a tank for generating power to charge the batteries etc. which will have to
last until the end of the race - otherwise we have a
problem.
At 10am we noticed a
baton coming out of the mainsail, on close inspection we had another tear in the
mainsail. Luckily the wind was down to a few knots, so down the sail came. Ron,
Nicko and Charlie set about repairing it again. This time we removed the middle
baton and the two free baton cars. The were cleverly replaced with webbing
straps, which hopefully replace the smashed set and take the strain of the final
run into St. Lucia.
Just as we finished
the wind came up, it was time to test the repair. Everything went up perfectly
the job -looked good, only time will tell if it is good
enough.
After a lunch of
tinned ham, cheese and rice salad the sun came out and the crew lazed about each
doing their own thing. Tom and Dave played guitars, Simon watched M.A.S.H on
DVD, Ron slept, Ian listen to a book on his ipod, Charlie read the latest Harry
Potter book and Andy played on the P.C trying to figure out the beat
route....
Meanwhile Nicko
concentrated on trimming Now3 and squeezing every last drop out of speed out of
the boat see below.
Early afternoon Ron
declared that we'd now passed into another time zone and therefore ship's time
should go back one hour, that makes us now 3 hours behind UTC (your
time).
The rest of the crew
reckoned he'd called it to push back our next celebration (passing through 1000
miles into 3 figure numbers) so that it felt earlier and physiologically
better.
And so it was that
at 6.30pm local we made it down to triple figures a big cheer went out and the
tinnies were cracked open and another celebration was had.
The
sundowners drifted into dinner. Bails had created: Lamb roast in garlic and
Rosemary with a Porcini and shallot sauce over a bed of cous cous - not bad for
a bunch of hairy blokes in the middle of the ocean!
Washed down with two
bottles of very special Rioja from Simon's cellar (underneath the starboard
bunk).
Night fell, another
episode of 24 was played for the TV addicts.
Dave tried to trade
watches with Charlie, claiming that evening was his awake time and if Charlie
didn't mind Dave would like a long lie in the morning. You can guess Charlie's
response.
Maxsea, our routing
program tells us that we half 24 hours of light variable winds (which probably
means motoring) the the trades - yehaaa!!!
Finally on the
midday positions we pulled 10 miles back on La Royere, dropped 15 on Charliz and
20 on North winds. We're still in 11th position overall and 4th in class and
still hoping to gain the edge in the trade winds.
Yet again we started
the engine before bed due to lack of wind.
Bye for now,
Nowcrew out.