Hi All,
Been a few days since I found time to write anything, anything I wrote yesterday would have sounded a bit negative with being stuck in a wind hole!
I seemed to have developed a knack for seeking out windless areas, this is not a talent I am too proud of to be honest, could be useful for a spot of mid atlantic wakeboarding perhaps but is not too handy in a yacht race!
We got a little stuck for 6hrs a few days ago, having given a windless area a wider berth than others around us, they carried on we parked!
Had a night of biblical rain, at times the cockpit drains were struggling so we had a mini foot spar, these drains can clear the cockpit in a couple of mins when we fill it with a big wave, so, the rain was pretty hard! (though moving some of the debris and spare lines that had accumulated did seem to help a little!).
We did manage to snatch back the lead overall for a time on the tracker, but were under no illusions that we would stay there, as the team on Vaquita have done a great job of putting themselves in the right place, and sailing very fast when they have breeze. I would imagine they will be the smallest monohull line honors winner of the ARC by 24' (assuming the VO60 at 64' was the previous smallest), top effort, guys don't drink all the rum before we get there!
Had a few flying fish attacks, some stealthy ones sneak on, only given away by the smell, hiding under spinnaker poles etc.
We made the call to dive south to get under an area of light wind, while we were going S giving up miles to Quokka, the forecast kept changing, finally yesterday we realised we were heading the wrong way and into oblivion. It looked like we would be stuck for a day longer than Q8 at least, but it seems that the forecast was so wrong a little wind found us last night and progress resumed! Almost feels like we used a get out of jail free card.
Yesterday we used the calm conditions to sort out our rather soggy forepeak, there was no spare deck space as spinnakers, storm sails, cushions, covers and gear was laid out in the sun while we bailed and sponged out all the
water from the lockers that had been there since the first night! Today we are drying the wet toilet rolls, looks like an andrex advert gone wrong (and minus the puppy!)
We have light NNE winds now and are making our way a little above the direct route to St Lucia to find some better wind, fingers crossed we can keep moving till we get there... I think in the mean time Q8 will take the handicap lead, hopefully we can stay near enough to have a chance to recover the lead?!
Anyway looks like the mythical trade winds are advertised to put in an appearance for the last part of the race, so we may get to fly our 4th spinnaker (the runner- which was used for 95% of last years crossing) at last!
Food still great, certainly not going to run out!
If all goes well we could be in St Lucia Monday...
All for now
Ross