Thursday 23 November 2023
Day 5
Today seemed to go by really fast, it was a fun day. My night shift (Nicole) finished at 7am, but I had the company of my lovely Gisèle (12) from 6am. So special snuggling up in the helm station in the peaceful light of the sunrise. Once the Capitan was up we changed the headsail out for our big red gennaker. We checked our placing on the YB Races app and we have dropped to 121st place. We spent the morning considering a different course where we would go more Westerly like some of the other boats in the ARC fleet. We decided to have a big sushi lunch using the mahi mahi we caught yesterday, so Gisele and I set about making rolls for everybody. We sat in the cockpit rolling sushi for an hour or so. Everyone loved the lunch and after that, Kenny went for a nap while the rest of us sat down to play Uno, onboard Uno of course! After three rounds we finished, and El Capitan decided to change our course to more of a rhumb line. However, after a few hours we decided to go back to our more southerly route because the swell direction was not as comfortable and we didn’t seem to be going much faster. I was on dinner duty so coated the rest of the fish we’d caught yesterday in a little bit of egg & flour then pan fried it, with twice cooked potatoes and a Greek salad, which we ate around the table in the salon. After that, it was time for Lynnie and Kenny to do the first night shift. We are still running a 3 shift schedule until everyone is feeling 100%. Overnight we ran a gullwing setup with our big red asymmetrical gennaker & mainsail, and closely watched the apparent wind in case it got up to big red’s limit of 12 knots. We raced through the night with apparent wind between 8-11kts, our speed was great (for us!) at between 6.5-8.5kts.
We made it through until 615am running that setup and then switched out big red to our white Genoa. Rich (el Cap) had an exciting shift - he has had “no action” on his shifts so far, but on watch from 1130pm - 3am he had a fellow ARC boat & friends Tempus to our Starboard side. We managed to cross just ahead of them and after that there was a container ship on a direct collision course with us. When it was 6 miles out & clear they weren’t moving, he radioed asking them to adjust course. In a thick Russian accent the captain replied “OK, I will check,” then “OK, we will change course to Starboard. Hold your course.”. It was a close pass within 1nm. On AIS we could see our friends on Tempus to our port side and further out Jarina. Nice to have company out here in the big blue!
Uno out