Little Island - 24 hours

Whilst very few of the boats in the cruising category are built to race ocean passages, it’s probably fair to say that the Moody 346 is close to the bottom of the preference rankings as you look around the dock. Of course we love our little boat, and for our very modest budget, we’re quite pleased. However, we can’t help but feel a little out of place when you line up next to some of the floating palaces departing Las Palmas. Nevertheless, although small, old and cheap; we wanted to make at least a small mark on the race. Given that we probably won’t be in contention for the prizes (sometimes we even wonder if we’ll make the finish on time!) the only place we can have a stab is at the start. Now, it’s not the most competitive start line and most sensible people hold back to reduce any risk of catastrophe striking before the 2700nm begins, but coming from a racing background I couldn’t resist it. We hung around at the port end of the line with the view of coming in on starboard with right of way and then gybing neatly round the buoy. With the bias, whoever played that move would surely take the early lead. Unfortunately somebody else in a 50+ foot Dufour had a similar plan so we had to kill a bit of distance and rethink. Taking advantage of our tight turning circle and relatively good manoeuvrability (not one of the selling points you’d ever find in the Moody brochure - basically, we’re just smaller) we managed to gybe early and sort of side stepped him. With us on port and him on starboard, we ducked his transom by a few feet after briefly locking eyes with a very concerned looking crew member whose expression made it seem almost certain we were going to hit him! To our delight, we popped out of the line at the gun with a gybe in hand to Mr Dufour, heading in the favoured direction and with a clear lead over the entire fleet! Job done and hopefully claims ratified by the camera boat. Then all that was left was to watch the majority of the fleet sail past us as if we weren’t there, but still, we relished the minor victory of the slowest boat in the fleet taking the lead for the first 30 seconds or so.

Since then we’ve used almost all of our different sail configurations after experiencing 30ish knots in the acceleration zone and a short period of nothing at all a couple of hours ago.

Our new Raymarine autopilot is excellent and has given Cat a new lease of confidence, whilst making me feel rather inferior because the little computer is a damn good helm and might even be faster than me! It can certainly concentrate for longer. We’ve named it Mandy as it stands in place of Cat’s mum, who was meant to join us on the trip but had to pull out last minute with some pretty tricky family circumstances.

Whilst we would always prefer the real Mandy, one advantage of having only two onboard is that, to my pleasure, the pastime of topless sunbathing is now observed when skies are clear.

As I write this we just thought we got a fish, but it was a false alarm. However, there is still 5 hours until supper, so we are hopeful...

Martin