Monday, 10th January 2011
00.00hrs Distance traveled.......................306 miles
Weather....................................good. Blue skies and scattered clouds.
Wind.........................................SW 20 knots +
We had a good night at sea, the seas were moderate and therefore made good progress. However, it was cool so on with the winter woollies. Warm jackets, gloves and furry knickers.
06.00hrs The wind went to S/SE blowing about 14 knots, a beautiful morning.
09.00hrs RADIO CALL. The radio net controller for today was Eowyn again, and Mike did the transmission. A Lady increased its lead over all yachts in the fleet with the exception of Wild Tigris, BUT, but, remember this, Wild Tigris is 16 feet longer than A Lady, so she should sail much faster than us at all times.
09.30hrs With the wind so light, Skipper and Sham went forward on deck and put up the KITE, just to remind you all, the KITE is our parasail (a 3,600 sq foot spinnaker with a large horizontal opening 2/3 of the way up the sail, and has a big wing in that opening). This sail keeps the boat very stable and the wing help lift the bow as we scoot along. We love this sail, but have not used it for months because the last time we had it flying, the auto pilot switched itself off, the boat gybed and as a result the Kite tore into little pieces, and Cape Town was the only place that could do the repairs.
The KITE must not be mixed up with our "Bag of Fear" that's the blue spinnaker and is not quite as big, but much easier to put up and take down.
11.30hrs The wind increased to 28 knots, so we decided to take down the KITE again and goose wing the boat, this all worked well and we were traveling along at 8 knots, even with a 1 knot current against us. This flippen current is supposed to be flowing with us, not against us!
12.00hrs Distance traveled in the last 24 hours was 185 miles.
The wind slowly increased during the rest of the day, some did sunbathing while others read books and took naps. Skipper took plenty of naps as he had been up since 02.45 hrs and felt tired all day.
18.00hrs The wind had increased to well over 30 knots, SSE and we were sailing down wind on a very broad port run, in fact shortly we shortened down the sails.
20.00hrs We had dinner prepared and served by Emily. It was a kind of Mexican dish served in Baps (I think). The dish was very different to what we normally cook ourselves and it was spicy. The result was bubbling bellies and plenty of additional wind floating around.
That's all for today.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)