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A Lady - Sailing around the World and avoiding the freezing weather and economy (Presently at sea)



Tuesday, 11th JANUARY 2011

06.00hrs We have covered 202 miles in the last 24 hours, that's good going. It was a fairly windy night, not to mention the rough seas. At one stage the auto helm just switched itself off, but did not cause us any grief, the last time this happened we had the KITE flying and the boat gybed as a result and the Kite was shredded.
 
Oyster Winter Magazine has been published and there is an article in it about our first part of the trip around the World, Kevin Dwyer says that one can down load the article from the web on the following address http://www.oystermarine.com/news_media/oyster_news.aspx
 
09.00hrs RADIO CALL We have increased our lead on most of the fleet and are level with Wild Tigris although they are 48 miles due west of us.
 
The weather was just lovely all day and we really enjoyed the sail, BUT, but then in mid afternoon, the blinkin E 120 computer/chart plotter just went to sleep.... Alarm bells started ringing all over the boat, and for a few short moments, we almost had a serious panick attack. For 15 minutes we tried in vain to shut down the alarms, we switched off both computers and  turned then on again, but to no avail. Ohhhhhhhh my gawd! Then Skipper could hear Fats shouting across the Oceans, "R.T.F.M." (read the f***n manual) so we dived into the saloon and dug out the manuals. After pretending to look intelligent studying the manuals, skipper just turned off all the computers again plus all the instruments for good measure...
 
Five minutes later, we switched everything on again, and voilá, everything was fully operational once more. We were as proud as punch for solving such a catastrophic problem, even if we really didn't know what we were doing. But, but, that wonderful thing BUT. We really know in our hearts, that Aileen was praying behind the scenes and that always works.
 
CRISIS OVER, phew, what a relief!
 
No drinks to celebrate, we decided leaving Cape town that we would stay off the drink for this leg, not even sundowners, But, we did have some of Collette's Christmas cake, and it was delicious. Well done Collette and many thanks.

We had another one of Emily's specials for dinner and it was excellent. Following the dinner, we sat and chatted about all the problems of the world, especially the one of the Irish Government shutting down our Sugar production, while every country and small Island we visited on our 27,000 miles so far, all grow sugar cane. The sugar beet industry was a great winter crop for the farmers of Ireland and provided plenty of cash for Santa as a bye product. 
 
Meanwhile, Sham smoked, or rather kept stoking his Pipe. We all love the smell of the pipe tobacco, BUT, but the whole thing does create a bit of a mess, well you know, the cockpit and deck tend to look more like a floating "ash tray" in the mornings rather than part of a boat, and his clothes are full of burn holes from trying to ignite the furness in windy conditions.
 
Night watches................. 21.00hrs  /  00.00hrs......................Skipper
                                      00.00hrs  /  03.00hrs......................Sham
                                      03,00hrs  /  06.00hrs......................Emily
                                      06.00hrs  /  09.00hrs......................Aileen
 
That's it for today
 
Signed  :-  Stephen  Hyde   ( Skipper )

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