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Adina - Day 16 A furling problem



Day 16 dawned with little wind and we were still using diesel to propel us.

Come 11am, following a squall and a nice rain shower, that all changed. 14 knots of wind and we had the sails out faster than you can say jack flash!

Life is never quiet and for some inexplicable reason our genoa furler motor decided to activate itself. While it didn't do anything to the sail it meant we had to send the engineering A team of Gareth and Susie to the bow to investigate. Returning looking rather wet (sea temperature is 27c so only wet, not cold) they reported our temporary drive belt had worn down and lost some teeth due to the inadvertent activation and the electric furler was once again non-operational. Various trips to the front with various Blue Peter style drive belts has not yet fixed the situation, but overnight another solution is sitting drying for testing this morning. Fingers crossed. In the mean time we have a manual ratchet to furl or unfurl the sail. It's very slow but it works. Too much to furl away to use our parasailor though! That said the winds are due to build to 20-25 knots in the next few days so the spinnaker will stay down anyway.

Lindsay and Neil made some chocolate rice crispy cakes which were devoured at afternoon tea. Neil then pulled off a stunning tagine using lamb and boat spices for dinner. We may need to make him a full time offer of live-aboard chef!

As we went into the night, we reached 40W which we've declared our half way point. It seems mad we left on the 24th November and are only half way now but it's been an exceptional year for light weather. We think we are actually about two-thirds of the way time-wise, fingers crossed!

Overnight we've been going along nicely with good winds and it is forecast to stay that way for a few days now. Let's hope so - the boat has now been at sea over two weeks and we have to ensure we look after her.

A good question yesterday from Heather asking if we can see other boats as the fleet tracker makes it look like there are lots of boats around us. The answer is no, we see nothing but sea. We saw one boat cross in front of us two days back and that created much excitement. We have seen the odd fishing vessel at night. Truth is you can only really see about 3-4 miles in daylight. As the boats converge on St.Lucia we're told you do see more.

So Harold forgot about the quiz yesterday - the answer to who knows Marine gear oil tastes tarter than Engine oil is Gareth. Makes you want to be a dinner guest at Gareths house. So who made the understatement of the trip went the furler failed by waking the skipper with the words "It's not a problem but..."

This is Adina, mid-Atlantic.


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