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Unconditional - ARC+ Leg 2, Day 4: Squalls & Shackles!



  We’ll start with today’s malfunction: ~midnight, the topping lift for the starboard ‘yankee’ headsail pole disengaged. It turns out that the short grabline for the shackle caught and released the pole. No damage, and the foredeck solution was to take slack out of the topping lift line, and zip-tie the shackle. As was stated in the pre-ARC+ seminar, the #1 unwritten job of a shackle seems to be to free itself – LOL!
 
  Again last night, a squall front came through out 17-degrees north position. Taking weatherman-sailor Chris Tibbs’ advice, we rolled in the mainsail, and reduced our dual headsail by 50% – early. The winds veered to the NW and we ran comfortably through the 3-mile cell. Subsequent cells of up to 28-knots pushed us 10nm north of our plan, however the wind produced a fast sail on the backside of the cells and we have reclaimed 9 of those 10nm. Our ARC+ distance to destination progress moved us up to #22 from #28 just 24-hours ago. the expected return of light winds will again favor the lighter boats.
 
  Speaking of reclaiming, our Garmin G2 Vision West Coast African map indicates that we have 31nm to the edge of its ‘world.’ With pleasure, I’ll need to replace it with my SE Caribbean G2 chip. Yes, we have a paper chart aboard of our crossing, as we have one for Cape Verde & St Lucia. We also have a compass & a sextant, however the electronic devices become convenient crutches for all but the purists.
 
  All is good, and Nick is on the aft deck fishing using the 4-flying fish that landed on our decks last night.
 
Tom Hughes



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