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Endeavour of Cork - Day 14 - Wednesday 30th November - Conor




Day 14- Wed 30/11/16 from Conor

G'day all, It was great to hear from so many readers of the blogs and glad they seem so popular. Hats off to Mairead she was the right person for the job.

It just struck me that as we have so many readers we should have given a better introduction to ourselves and how we ended up in the middle of the Atlantic- just in time.

It all started when I signed up to do an evening course in the Carrigaline community school on coastal navigation. seems odd in hindsight but I found it very interesting even without a boat and I started crewing on occasions during the winter leagues in Crosshaven - I worked in our pharmacy in Carrigaline at the time and that included Sunday mornings so it was not easy to get away regularly at the time. When I did especially on cold, windy winter mornings I really enjoyed it. A couple of years later I was walking through Crosshaven and I saw a 1980's First 25 called Golden Eye for sale. Denise was away in London for the weekend and by the time she had returned the deal , much to her surprise, was sealed. We both started sailing and racing it guided in the early days by Kevin O'Sullivan from South Africa who knew how to sail and trained Denise to be a very skilled foredecker. One morning we were all on the dock and Kevin was ill so I said "I'll drive" and never looked back. Our children Silvia and chris have done a lot of sailing and Laura (our youngest) who is accompanying us on this trip never took to it- see her blog. For many years we thought that it would be lovely to do the Arc and thought that 2016 should be the year as Laura would be in transition year.

Denise went to Dublin last spring and did a full time offshore yachtmaster course. This involved sailing over and back across the Irish sea mostly in cold and gales and now she is far more qualified to sail than I am. It was while doing this course that the ARC plans really came along. One of her classmates on this course was Frenchie Anais Boue who hails from Grenobles but lives in Dublin. Anais had decided to change career and plans a future as a boat skipper on the sea so she was invited along. Anais has been jumping in at every opportunity, climbing the mast when required (Denise says its easier at 29 than at 51) and I've no doubt she will make a great career of it (and she is available for deliveries if anyone needs a reliable skipper).

One year when we were registering to race in Calves week in Schull we met Mairead who was looking for a boat to sail on. She turned out to be great company and She lives in Dublin and sails out of the National Yacht club in Dun Laoghaire. When asked, she jumped at the opportunity as she found she had enough holidays from work to come along. Mairead sails extensively and likes the long distance and ISORA races, so in ways was an obvious addition.

Dermot then hails from Waterford and lives in Tramore. My sister, Noirin, knew that his lack of experience with sailing would be made up by his enthusiasm and love of the sea. Dermot leads cycle tours when he's not sailing across the Atlantic. He has also kayaked around Ireland in 33 days and spent 5 weeks kayaking around Iceland and has finally proven himself as to be an adept fisherman. Judging by his performance in catching a big mahi-mahi he could wrestle a fish twice his size to the deck and subdue it in seconds.

So we are an unlikely bunch and weren't all friends beforehand so I think we've got on remarkably well. Of course, being in such an enclosed space everyone has to dig deep at times. To get away from it all from time to time we go to the bow to watch the water, the waves, the dolphins, the hues of the sky and soon all feel at ease again

We do wish we had air conditioning and were envious to hear of boats with washing machines. Dancing in a bucket in my bare feet in my Carribean outfit is the closest I've got to a washing machine. Denise is badly in need of a neck massage from looking at the spinnaker. Its a wonder she hasn't housemaids knee as well as she has been doing trojan work in keeping the boat shipshape. St Lucia edges ever closer and we cant wait to set foot on land again. Sitting here with no exercise made us all a bit restless so the swims were great in that regard.

so as i write we are again motoring but expect better breeze to bring us to St Lucia on Friday. Overall we've had a light crossing and I'd say some of the boats who may not have provisioned sufficient diesel will be out in the Atlantic for a good while more. I hope they are good at fishing! We were mildly alarmed to discover our lower port spreader had come under excessive strain during the trip. The bolt closest to the mast is dislodged slightly and bent and the spreader has moved a few mm out of line. These spreaders basically are part of the support sytem for the mast and failure could have serious consequnces (basically you could lost the mast). We assume this happened during a gybe so as a precaution against further damage we have put a reef in the main to reduce the load, letting the jib do more work. We are also taking care not to have any further accidental or hard gybes and we are attaching and tensioning a line from the spreader back to the aft cleat or maybe winch to further support it. Thats the next job and I'll let Mairead get on now with her daily post now that I've finally introduced everybody... Thanks again for reading





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