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Vagaris - Parasailor up at last



Hooray, blue skies this morning, 12-14 knots gradient trade wind directly from behind, clouds a long way off on the horizon. Time to put the parasailor up.

My morning began in the middle of the night as Steve woke me because he'd been tracking a couple of big squalls on the radar. This looked like the real deal - big and menacing and bold on the radar screen - so we reefed down from our nighttime default of 1 reef and staysail to 2 reefs and staysail and started to track and see if we could dodge the worst of it.

Fortunately after a bit of brain aching with vectors and radar tracking we altered our course a couple of times and it thankfully slipped through behind us.

An hour later Steve wasn't so lucky, as one bore down on him and hit him with a near-instantaneous 90° wind shift but fortunately with only slightly raised winds. With the sails set, the tactic is just to go with the flow and keep sailing to the wind. This sets you off in typically completely the wrong direction, but there's no use fighting it. After 10 minutes it spits you out and you can gradually resume course as the winds reduce and the direction returns to the previous norm.

Today looks much better so far. It is hot, the wind is steady and we're heading the right direction.

Long may it last

Adrian
Sy Vagaris

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