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Pannikin - Days 10-13





Wednesday 4th December – Day 10
A quiet day without much wind saw us burning a few more litres of diesel with very calm seas and almost no swell it was hard to believe we were in the middle of the Atlantic.
The highlight of the day once again as the fishing reel screaming off and by the time Steve picked it up, the fish had taken nearly all the line. It was a good fight which lasted ten minutes and finally a good size tuna was landed, so lunch was fresh tuna and salad. Absolutely beautiful!

Thursday 5th December – Day11
Light winds prevailed, although there was enough to turn the motor off and set a spinnaker which made life on board a little less noisy. The speed has been very slow, each day we get a new forecast and turn to where they predict more wind only to find similar conditions. Our track on the plotter instead of a straight line looks more like a set of stairs. The crew are sending emails home as the threat of not making it to St Lucia in time for their flights becomes a real issue. We are all looking to the horizon for more wind. Hopefully we will make it to the Caribbean to get the crew home before Christmas.

Friday 6th December – Day 12
Pannikin flew her spinnaker all through the night and Ange and Steve were on watch around dawn when the spinnaker came falling down into the water. The rest of the crew were abruptly woken to help pull it back on deck before it became wrapped around the keel. The halyard (the rope that holds it up) had chaffed through and broken at the top of the mast (bugger!). So out with main and jib and keep sailing as best we could. Mention must be made that throughout all of the goings on with people running around and calling back and forth there was a fair bit of noise which Di slept soundly through, only to poke her head out at the end and say “did I miss something”.
Paul, Andrew, John and Di did a great job stitching the torn main sail back together again under Paul’s guidance, so once repaired we put it back up again and it looked stronger than before. Great job guys!
The last few days there has been a smell developing in the saloon and it came to the point that we could no longer blame Andrew, so we went hunting and found some of the beer cans and a large milk bottle had ruptured in the bilge. The bilge was full of canned food and drinks which had to be removed and cleaned, the bilge scrubbed and dried then restocked which took quite some time, which kept everyone busy and their minds off the lack of wind.
Happy hour followed by steaks on the BBQ finished off the day.

Saturday 7th December – Day13
Each day we do a schedule rollcall and are in contact with other yachts via the SSB radio, and yesterday there was talk of more wind to the south, so we followed their advice and were rewarded with 15kts of southeast breeze. The conversation in the cockpit was how nice it would be if we still had a spinnaker, so Steve volunteered to go up the mast and thread a new halyard through the block. This is a job that is normally done in a marina but as we don’t have that option we just had to make things as safe as possible and get it done. An hour later the spinnaker was up and Pannikin was cruising along at 6-7 kts. More stitching has been done on the headsail as the UV protectant has come loose with all the use & heavy winds last week.





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