ARC Day 7
The ESE winds continue to blow and send Ceilidh along the rhumb line course of 260M to St Lucia.
Our daily run was 189NM once again.
This is very satisfying as by sailing direct rather than gybeing down wind we save around 20% on distance sailed through the water. It is all to do with Ceilidh’s design and in lay man’s terms we normally “zigzag” down wind as this is the most effective for our boat speed.
Around 21:00 last night we saw the breeze briefly drop to only knots, we shook out 2 reefs from the main and before long it was back up at 25knots!
However at 04:40 today and for the first time since we set sail from Las Palmas we hoisted full main in around 15knots of breeze.
As we continue to see strong squalls up to 35knots from clouds along with heavy showers, we have put 1 reef back in the main.
We are still comfortably maintaining our 8-9 knot boat speed and the forecasts show the ESE breeze will continue over the next 2 days.
The lighter conditions have given us the most comfortable night’s sleep since we started, we continue to hand steer with Mags & Janet noticing their shoulders bulking up by the day!
We are tracking the other yachts in our class on a spread sheet so we can see where they are relative to us.
Some of the equipment onboard that has been a big success is the generator and the aft cabin lee cloths. The latter have been load tested have been load tested up to 21stones and have performed brilliantly allowing a good sleep.
The second verse of our 12 days tune is:
On the second day of Ceilidh’s ARC my skipper gave to me, 2 broken genoa cars.
We will soon be halfway through our epic journey!
Dave Sturrock