Dear log, so far as you can see the trip has been fairly intresting with steerage failure, and struggling to find a constant breeze taking president, there has been many good parts so far to say the least, Sam's sea sickness is over well and truly and calls of are we nearly there yet have started, but he is keeping me laughing on my watch and for someone who has only ever been in a yacht once several years ago for a short period is having a real good stab at it...
The positives of today has been the wind has started to settle we held on to the kite for a second night running and I think this did us great favours as we started to crawl up our way back towards the front, although huge amounts of concentration is required whilst flying the kite at night but everyone seems to have a really good feel for it whilst the winds are still light ish... one of the most frustrating things would be the yachts around us in the cruising class would sail during the day and we would slowly catch them and over take a few, but through out the evening the crusing yachts engines would come on, (there are about 25 yacht racing under sail the rest of the 225 fleet are permitted to use engine, we have been under sail since leaving the start line at Las Palmas. Given this frustration we knew that it is not due to last as we have heard some of the other yachts talking around us on the VHF radio that they have to be careful with their fuel some of them with only one or two days nights motoring capability, also knowing with the wind speed due to increase we should fair ok in the next 24 hours.
The main focus of the teaching today was getting Kevin to understand the points of sail and spinaker sail trim which took a while for him to see it but he has it now, as spinakers are not part of the RYA Yachtmaster scheme his learning experience has been a little out of the box and a little spiriting before running has had to be enduredd just by the nature of the wind that we have had on board which can not be helped.
Other than the wind picking up and we are starting to get the boat moving it has been a fairly uneventful day (I really wish I could write about tomorrow but I have been given strict instructions not to right anything as it is Steve's turn a very exciting day so don't forget to have a read tomorrow).
Until next time somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Sailing Yacht Jewel
Log written by PT