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Endeavour of Cork - Day 2 Friday 18th Nov



Day 2 Fri 18th Nov The Atlantic

2pm

I've had to start putting the actual day and date on these blogs as I can feel myself starting to get disorientated already!!

Well it was all happening on board this morning. The giddy speeds of 8+ knots under spinnaker that I wrote about yesterday didn't even last the length of my watch, and then the wind gradually died off, and Anais spent her watch chasing what little wind there was up and down until eventually we admitted defeat and took the spinny down. Then started the game of trying to get the jib to fly - pole it out to leeward, pole it out goosewinged, don't pole it out at all, roll it in..... Eventually we gave up on that as well, and just started motoring as we'd virtually come to a halt.

During the night I gambled on 8.5-9kts of wind being enough to keep us moving as I was sick of the engine at that point so put the sails out. It was just about enough, and we eked out barely 4kts overnight.

Then this morning up went the cruising chute, which speeded things up considerably! It's a whole lot easier to control and sail with than the full spinny, although we did manage to put a couple of small rips in it from collapsing it around the spreaders over the course of the morning - down it came, a quick patch repair was done, and it's back up again. As we were recovering from that, I woke up to whoops from above - Dermot had struck gold (or at least, a tuna). I took the helm while Conor and Dermot struggled with it, got it drunk on vodka, and eventually it succumbed. Lots of triumphant photos were taken, and then I'll admit that I legged it down below and stayed well out of the way while all the blood'n'guts bit was done up on the foredeck.

Dermot, although he cooked last night's dinner, gallantly offered to cook us a tuna lunch with his spoils, and we dined on fried tuna steaks, carrots, onions and fresh bread rolls (the last we'll see of those for a while!!) Yum!! (and I'm not even a big fish-lover). There's another two days-worth of fish steaks left over, if we can keep it fresh (and can stomach that much tuna in a short space of time!!)

We've got position reports from the rest of the fleet and think we're still in last place of those boats who are on the water. However if we can keep the spinny flying and keep up the speeds we have at the moment, we'll hopefully start to catch them up.

Forecast looking similar for the next couple of days - light, steady winds. All good (although another 5kts would be nice!!)

Endeavour, over and out

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