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Webster - From the sublime to the ridiculous



Sunday 4th May: Position at 1200: 21 03'N 64 03'W

Last night continued to produce decent winds into the very early hours although did slacken off a little from 4am. To my horror we dropped below 7 knots for the first time since we left! Speed wise it has been quite a trip so far. 

0900 local time we had the first SSB radio net which went very well from our point of view as it is good to receive almost perfect reception, not always the case with SSB, but we are all quite close yet. I had Dave asleep in the saloon and Neal asleep in his cabin snoring like Warthogs being castrated, just as I initially made contact with Frans on Aurora the net controller. He must have thought the noise was radio interference but no, it was them Treacle Miners off watch trying to lift the cabin roof. Its hard to believe they can sleep through that! 

We have seen no shipping to date out here but around 1000 an LPG ship came into view and naturally was on collision course.....do they just aim at you to have a look or what? Anyway, he altered course late on which was a relief before Igor had to take avoiding action. 

Put the spinnaker up in what was a light breeze and were making good speed over the ground but having to alter course up and down track to keep the kite filled and powered up, so a lot of concentration required on the helm. It all paid off as out noon to non run equated to some 180nm! Post noon though the wind was dropping off continually and we ended up motoring for an hour until it picked up a bit in the afternoon. 

We had a radio check in at 1730 local time and all concerned about the weather. I reported we were under spinnaker doing 6.2 knts and as soon as i did the wind dropped again. I was just making dinner, Green chicken curry, when we thought we would get the spinnaker down before we ate as we were going to have to motor. The sail snuffer worked a treat and extinguished the sail perfectly. I asked for the halyard to be released but it refused to come down despite tugging away at it. We managed at best to get it half down and get it half stowed in the bag and half tied up the mast in the sock, but not until I had tried to kick off the jib track with bare feet, 'Ouch' I said, or words similar in effect! 

Then I realised I had left the rice on during all this escapade....burnt. Put a new lot on whilst Dave started the engine and we put on the deck nav lights. No port light showing. What? It had worked perfectly only a couple of days ago. So a new bulb had to be sourced and fitted. Narrowly missed burning the rice for a second time. 

All this shenanigans had taken place in a hour and a half. It really was going from the sublime to the ridiculous. Everything just seemed to be going wrong at the same time so I put my life jacket on just in case despite still being below rescuing rice. Anyway, the curry was eventually okay and I went to bed for a couple of hours to avoid any further mishaps and nurse my throbbing toes. 

We are now motoring with little prospect of wind for a day or two maybe. We don't have fuel to motor the entire way so we really hope something happens with the wind even if we can't fly a spinnaker any longer.

Charlie

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