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Northern Child - Daily Log 9 - 5/12/12 - Singing and Laughter in the Air




Daily Run    209
m
DTT             197nm
 
Lunch           Oven baked Baguette with Ham, Cheese and Sweet Chilli Sauce
Dinner           Red Thai Pork Curry
 
There has been good news and bad news today.  The bad news was our midday report which showed us doing only 130nm towards target and having lost out on many of the yachts in our fleet - that was very disappointing.  BUT, the good news was, well fabulous.
 
The last 24hrs has been one of the pivotal moments that happen on a long offshore or Ocean passage.  It is that magical moment, when you know that the duckling has learnt all it needs to know to leave the pond, the moment that brings together all of the learning and sharing and turns the duckling......... into a fine crew!
 
The sure fire sign that your crew have; grasped the situation - middle of the Ocean, the condtions - constantly changing, the sail trim - constantly changing, the routing - vital for a fast passage, THE POINT - the guys have become good competent Ocean sailing crew.  What demonstates that?  Well it's simple, the laughter and singing in the dark on deck tells me that they are relaxed and in control - or it could be scurvey or insanity perhpas?  No - THEY ARE IN CONTROL!
 
It was a great night sail with 14-16knots of wind from the SSW and calm seas, meaning good effortless progress - BEA-utiful!  It wasn't all plain sailing though.  In the water 5 kilometres deep on the 0200-0600 watch about an hour before they finished, my biggest fear on the sea came to haunt us - Lightning........  I don't know a sailor anywhere that likes lightning, unless they are tucked up at home ashore!  It is often unpredictable in it's path and the thought of being struck which would almost certainly render every piece of electronics useless is not a nice one 1000nm from your destination - well, from anywhere for that matter.  I sat on deck watching the lightening with watch A for about 15 minutes, it was fortunately a long way off, just a flash high up in the clouds, rather than visible forks.  To everyones delight, it didn't get any closer to us and we watched the light of the lightening flahes disappear into the distance.
 
Morning broke, with a spring in it's step but quickly the wind dropped and for much of the day, it meant that we were bobbing about with flappy sails.  I don't think we ever hit 0knots, but I did see 0.8knots at one point.  Our ETA which has been 10th - 12th December since the first day of leaving Las Palmas, was for that brief time shattered and I saw 8th January at one stage today.  However, the delight of modern weather forecasting is that we were expecting this lull and know that sometime later tonight or early tomorrow the wind will go round to the NE and gently build up to 20-25 knots over the next couple of days.  Once ths happens, we should then be 'plain' sailing, fast plain sailing towards and into St Lucia, where the Rum and some delightfeul creature comforts await us.
 
Todays crew profile is Howard Murphy:  I am employed as a Group Buyer for a Major Motor Retail Group and 54 years of age.  I wanted to do this for an amazing adventure and trip across the atlantic.  I have been visiting St Lucia for almost 20 years and have witnessed the ARC coming in on the end of their journey and always wanted to do this myself so I took the plunge and requested one months unpaid leave to take part.  I have never sailed smaller yachts before like this, but I am ex Royal Navy so big ships I have done much of.  I also decided not to do this just for my own experience so I am raising money for Cancer Research UK.  I chose this because at one point in our lives it touches us all - I lost my mother and very close friend so that was my reason.  If you would like to help, it would be very much appriecaited and you can help me support by visiting www.justgiving.com/howard-murphy Every penny helps for a charity that always needs our help.  It is turning out to be a bigger adventure than I ever could have imagined. Christian and Tim are a great team and the crew are a great mixed bunch all working well together.
 
I said there was fabulous good news!  Well we discovered shortly after plotting our position that our tracker had stopped updating 8 hours before the postions were logged, so we were actually about 50-60nm further ahead than the results showed - this made for one very happy Skipper :-)
 
Till tomorrow
 
Christian, Tim and crew




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