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Koala - Dec 14th: Friday the 13th part 2



Yeah, I know, I didn't mention Friday the 13th yesterday. I thought it better not to. We're a superstitious bunch us sailors, and it did prove to be a tough day elsewhere in the fleet. One boat caught fire, one was dismasted and another was taking on water.

So our late evening was tame by comparison, but at dusk it started looking a bit squally and cloudy, so we dropped the main in about 30 knots of breeze and carried on overnight under poled out genoa. Partly because the genoa is more stable like that, but mainly because I really didn't fancy dancing on the foredeck with a 16ft aluminium pole with 12 ft swells in the dark!

Also, after saying that we had not seen a boat for a week, we had two last night. One turned out to be Second Wind, one of the boats from our net who we knew was nearby, and the other was a Russian supertanker. He sounded fairly dismissive when I called him up on the VHF to confirm that he had seen us and was not going to run us down. Mind you, it's easy to be casual from an aircon bridge sitting in a big gimballed leather armchair drinking fresh coffee. They wouldn't even feel the bump if they ran us over!

At dawn, we got caught by a squall. The wind came up from 28 to 40 knots in an instant and it lasted for about 20 minutes. I went and sat behind the wheel just in case, but she just kept on ploughing her way down wind. Apart from one 10.5 knot surf, the speed didn't increase too much.

Since then, a fairly uneventful day, sailing in company with Second Wind. It is nice to have a friendly voice on the end of the VHF. Will have to catch up for a beer when we get in. However, they did start edging ahead, so we had to shake out a reef this afternoon!




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