Sunday 4th December
Nowcrew
Sun 4 Dec 2005 11:20
After spending a
good part of last night getting the correct sail configuration for the the
low winds we were experiencing, Saturday morning started with a steady 9 knot
breeze and the now well balanced boat making 6 knots towards St
Lucia.
There was a clear
blue sky and as the sun came up it was clear that it was going to be a HOT day.
Tom (Papa Smurf) rustled up the usual beans and bacon breakfast, Andy set about
finding the best winds for the day and the rest of the crew settled into
finding shady areas of the boat to sit and read with the exception of Nicko who
is set on having a golden brown tan before Sarah and his kids
arrive!
Mid morning there
was a bit of frantic activity on deck and we found that during a wind shift,
an adjustment to the rigging had caused one of the starboard
side power winches to be over stressed and the underside of
the jammer had sheared. This was the main winch that we used to raise and
adjust the main sail so we needed to find a solution to fixing it. Bails
and Chas set about stripping down a manual winch of the same size on the Port
side of the cockpit and used this to replace the broken parts.
Soon we were up and
running again and Andy set about trimming the sails for maximum speed. The wind
speed was slowly increasing and skipper was determined to squeeze every
available knot out of the boat.
Bails (The Swedish
chef) rustled up a pasta carbonara for lunch washed down by pink water. Our way
of making the desalinated water taste more palatable is to put a touch of ribena
cordial in a jug of it with lots of ice! Tom calls it his mid day medicine
shot.
Due to the superb
weather the afternoon activity of the day was to dismantle the spray hood
that had so wonderfully protected us from the waves that crashed over the bows
in the heavier seas. This was replaced by larger bimini that covered the
entire cockpit and gave us some much needed shade from the now scorching sun.
The decks were getting so hot that it was difficult to walk on them in bare
feet. This was a good sign that the skipper was not expecting any more heavy
sea's from his weather predictions and that the much awaited trade winds were
setting in.
Afternoon cinema
featured Anger Management staring Jack Nickolson. If you have not seen it do, if
you have watch it again as it is one of those films that makes you laugh however
many times you watch it.
Sundowner time was
soon upon us with another couple of bottles of Simon's (Master Chef) red wine
and then it was on to Thai Green Curry a la M&S for
dinner.
The evening progress
report still had us third in our class but we did receive news that the first
racing boat which is a 104 foot yacht called Leopard was due to arrive in St
Lucia at about 6pm today! A good 5 days ahead of us (we )but at the start we
would have expected that gap to have been even greater.
It had been a good
days sailing without any engine power and as we cruised into a golden
sunset it looked like we would continue this way for the rest the
night.
Nowcrew
out.