19:46.74S 0:30.09E

 

We’ve been at sea for just over a week now, and apart from the autopilot issue, everything was going swimmingly until last night. The winds have been light so trying to place Ghost in a position to make the most of it has been paramount. Up until now the grib files that we receive over the satellite connection have been fairly accurate, a lot closer to reality than the company who have taken on the challenge to route us across the oceans to this point. We are convinced that these people live in a box somewhere, making it up as they go along. To date we have not had an accurate forecast from them and are deeply suspicious of their qualifications to be weather routers. So to the grib files we have listened, and we chose a slot between Africa and the south Atlantic high. It has been light winds, a bit of motoring but we have managed to keep going due to our big asymmetric spinnaker who is affectionately known as “Pinky”.

 

We have flown Pinky day and night without any ill effect throughout the trip, the rules being – if we get a steady 17 knots we must think of taking it down. Last night was perfect, a little cloudy, but otherwise a great light wind sailing night. So when the boat started healing alarmingly at 0400 everybody shot out of bed to find Chris shouting for cordial assistance as a tropical squall hit us. By the time that everyone had donned their harnesses to go on deck the sound of flogging spinnaker had changed to complete silence. It was in the water and very much not in one piece. The good news is that nothing else was damaged and we were off sailing again after about an hour of clearing up and hoisting other sails. On close inspection the repair needed is not too technical and will just need a few hours on a sewing machine. Something we are sure we can achieve in St Helena as we’ve just discovered there is a sail maker there. I don’t know what he does on top of mending sails because there cannot be enough business to keep him fed on the amount of yachts that pass by this little island.

 

Chris is of course mortified. This morning he expressed how guilty he felt about breaking our wonderful light weather sail – all I could say was “Good!”

 

I do know it’s not his fault – but he doesn’t need to know that.