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Nexus - 290 miles to go and all is well



A boisterous sailing night with good winds of 20-25kts and 4-5M waves gave us a rough ride but good progress. We sailed under double reef main and just "underpants" of jib showing and the boat sailed steady with as good a ride as we could produce. The bashing produced two minor bits of excitement to keep us entertained. First we heard a bang around 2am, and noticed the aft end of the dingy had dropped onto the safety lines we rigged around it. The stainless cross member that the davit pulley attaches to across the back of the dingy had snapped in half, probably from cycle fatigue failure. We rigged up a rough chain of spare shackles to replace it and lifted it back onto the davit pulley, while bouncing in the waves. The second thing we noticed was the elastic shock cord holding two of the four sides of the front trampolines had snapped in places from the wave action and UV degradation over the year. I was out there this morning weaving spare shock cord into it so we didn't loose the trampolines to the sea, and had a good cold shower as the bows plunged through the occasional wave as our well placed jack lines held me in place. Sailing is fun right? Who gets to do this?
Anyway, the weather looks better this morning and we're sailing well, still keeping our speed down for a better ride. We have 290nm to go, and probably will arrive late Saturday or early Sunday depending on the weather and currents. All is well.

Russ and Laurie on NEXUS 11:00 11/7/2014 at 27 59.7'S;37 25.0'E


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