Friday 28th November
After the excitement of the dolphins, Alastair upped the
ante with his version of a Spanish omelette, which had just about everything
thrown in for good measure. It did not disappoint!
We decided to calm things down for dinner as we were
charging around doing 9+ knots with the code zero and although scraping food off
the floor to eat probably adds some interesting flavours and textures, the
omelette deserved a more dignified presentation. Sadly we overlooked the
opportunity to open a decent Rioja to toast the King of Spain’s singed beard; I
think I can get away with that now we are outside Spanish territorial
waters!
Dinner concluded (doing almost 7 knots under main
alone); we unfurled the genoa and resumed normal service, flying along on a beam
reach at approximately 8-9 knots.
Given that none of us probably sleep for more than 4
hours at one time, I’d have said we were all doing pretty well. Whilst I thought
this was the case, the end of my watch (06:00 hrs this morning) proved me wrong.
I didn’t think it was possible to fall asleep whilst standing; you can! Luckily,
I awoke as my knees gave way and I didn’t hit the floor. However, by the end of
my watch I was a zombie and hadn’t computed that over a period of 2 hours the
wind had backed and that we were approximately 50 degrees off course. Whilst to
date we’ve adopted the strategy of sailing the fastest course in approximately
the right direction, 50 degrees in the wrong direction for 1-2 hours is not very
clever and I hope we don’t pay for that in our placing. In the overall scheme of
things, it’s not a big deal, but it does now mean quite a few hours beating to
windward to keep us pointing in the right direction to join the trade
winds.