The one that got away.

Rik
Wed 22 Nov 2023 20:23
The wind remained light yesterday and many ARC boats took to their engine. Not so the Moose we persisted with our spinnaker and had a slow but comfortable ride. It felt much warmer with the lighter winds and provided a golden opportunity for a bit of washing, the bosun’s work is never done.

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Washing dries fairly quickly in the tropics.

Dicky has been studying the “last 24 hours” data in the YB app trying to figure out who has been motoring. You are allowed to use your engines but your time will be adjust by your engine hours times a “factor” set depending on the conditions. So we don’t really now where we are in the race (it’s a rally not a race) but we do know we are at least 4th in “Multihulls B”.

Yesterday we sailed spinnaker only, today we tried to get extra speed with 1 reef in the main and sail the angles. Still not sure what is best. We can sail straight down wind with spinnaker only but have to zig zag downwind with the main sail up.

So there I was sat on the bow,

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there hadn’t been so much as a splash for ages so I decided to take a photo near the bow sprit, bosh a rouge wave hits the port bow and I am soaked from head to foot ! Soon be dry.

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Anyway this is “baggywrinkle” it is used to prevent chafe, yesterday in the light winds the spinnaker occasionally touched the horseshoe so we used the baggywrinkle we made on our crossing in 2017.

Fishy Dicky’s rotten luck continues, today he hooked something enormous and fought it for an hour and fifteen minutes. The reel has an adjustable clutch that allows the fish to peel off line rather than breaking it. So every time Dicky reeled him in he ran off with more line ! I think both of them were exhausted but just as Dicky got him near the boat he made one last dash for freedom and he was gone. We think it was a very large Wahoo, probably around two metres long so maybe it was a good thing as we don’t have freezer space for 20 kilos of Wahoo. We never saw the whole fish as he was constantly trying to dive, but he did have a very big tail that was thrashing from side to side occasionally breaking the surface.

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To say we all felt for Dicky when the fish got away would be a huge understatement!!