can we help
+44(0)1983 296060
+1 757-788-8872
tell me moreJoin a rally

Menu

Starblazer 13/01/2014 – Making progress



Our fantastic start and good average speed until about midnight on Saturday, together with the fact that we are double handed and try to avoid sail changes in the dark, conspired to send us tumbling down the leaderboard! 
Let me explain. Just before we started our overnight watch system we decided it would be prudent to roll away some of the genoa because we were charging along and, whilst comfortable with 15-18 knots of wind, were worried it might increase overnight. In fact it slowly dropped to 10 knots by about 0600 when we were forced to unroll the sail again. An additional  consideration was the direction, not quite what we wanted, but we were unable to sail straight downwind without poling out the genoa. During the radio net it became obvious only a few boats were further east than us and most were further south.

Straight after the net we set about rigging the twin poles, dropping the main and pulling out the genoas. That sounds quick and easy, and would be for a fully crewed boat with younger, fitter, stronger people available. In the event, it took us about an hour, for much of that time sailing on mainsail alone. The Eureka moment came when we pulled out the genoas again and they easily set wing and wing. The boat speed increased and, more importantly, we could set off in the right direction. One of the jobs we managed to achieve in Rodney Bay was pulling a second genoa up on the spare luff groove (think curtain track for people who haven’t a clue what I’m talking about) then rolled them away together. This enables us to set them together on the same side or, with the use of poles, set them on either side. In the ensuing 8 hours we made up 5 places. No we are not racing, we’re not competitive, we just want to enable Starblazer to go as well as she can.

The rest of the day was quite restful, the motion of the boat was more comfortable and we both had an extra couple of hours of sleep. At different times, I should hasten to add. We haven’t seen another sail all day and even the AIS hasn’t identified any targets since about noon. Our noon run was 157 miles towards our first waypoint, none too shabby really, given that much of it wasn’t in the right direction. As it was Sunday we had chicken breasts in a honey and ginger marinade roasted together with potato slices, carrots, peppers and aubergine. Yummy!


Stop press: we have a hitch hiker. A large bird, think pigeon size not sparrow, has roosted for the night on the solar panels. They’ll need a good wash in the morning or they won’t be very efficient. If he’s still there in daylight I’ll take a photo. Wingspan about 18-24”. Beak 2-3”. Brown all over except for a white crown. ID?
Stop, stop press: There’s another one on the BBQ.

Joyce 


Previous | Next