Amandla Kulu - 16_ Crack goes the halyard

Captain’s Log. Star Date 06 December 2022

Day 16. Seventeen day on the water.

2039 GMT.
1839 Local.

14º 04 N
52º 09 W

///manmade.hornless.timeframes
https://w3w.co/manmade.hornless.timeframes

Not quite sure when today started or yesterday ended.

Other than loosing the generator (primary means of making electricity), loosing sat com data and snapping a halyard … oh yes and receiving a forecast of lots of wind for this evening, nothing much to report.

Started with the wet clothes from yesterday’s dosing in squall. Dried fairly quickly after the sun broke through and the warm breeze picked up.

We had a few hours of positively super power reaching. Charging down the Great Circle line at a great speed. Wind slowly backed which kept shifting us further and further off course.

Ended up dropping the Zero and hoisting Yo Yo the headsail.

All went well until bang, sail dropped down and halyard was lost. Sail recovery was professional.

We paused for tea to capture breath and regroup. Morale was bloody low. #brokenarrow

Regroup. Take a breath and go again. We are one. We are crew.

I had a call with our top tech team that make the data connection. They conferenced in the satellite people, who did not quite grasp the concept that we are a small yacht in the middle of the Atlantic. An engineer call out is not entirely practical right now!

Saw our old friends Ellinora appear on the plotter. I gave them a shout on VHF. Turns out that not only are we not transmitting our AIS position, our radio transmits very poorly. We could hear them =A-Okay (and the yacht Misty) — however they could not hear us.

Did pick up a question from Ellinora about my thoughts on the gale in the daily forecast from ARC. Despite not having a data connection, I was able to speak to Grand Fromage Andrew of ARC Control who relayed the forecast for our sea area QQ.

On the back of speaking to Andrew, we dropped a reef in the main, dropped Yo Yo and hoisted the storm sail — the breeze had doubled in strength in matters of a moment.

The forecast …

Plenty of breeze over night, plenty more breeze tomorrow, even more breeze tomorrow night (screaming downwind sailing) and a lighter day on Thursday.

With only 513 nm to the northern end of the finish line — our sub 499 party is nearly due.

At time of writing, John, Terry, Louisa and Peter are putting the world to rights on deck in the squall rain. Jen and Tommy are creating dinner. Jules has a sleepy, just woken up head on and Will is still out cold; due to be woken in 20 seconds.

Needing to drink much more water and salts.

Fair breeze. God speed and following seas

Pip

Adz