Jadamama - Day 9 blog Jadamama

Classic shouting and roaring about the blog and taking responsibility only to realise that I am the one on Blog duty today, plus ca change…

Tradewind sail repair stitching is in full flow with everyone taking a turn on the needles and riggers palms with Polly providing lots of observations and mostly unheeded advice. We expect to have the tear stitched crudely by this evening and will spend the next day or so reinforcing stress points. We are taking our time and getting the best advice we can as we don’t need to deploy it until later in the week when the wind is forecast to lighten considerably. The boat really wakes up in about 20 knots of breeze but struggles in the lower figures so we are doing our best to get the sail fixed in time to help.

The sea has been building a bit today and Marc has positioned us better to get a nudge along rather than trying to fight it. Autohelm struggles occasionally with the surges but has performed excellently so far keeping us on our wind angles within a few degrees and far better than any of us on the helm. In the absence of our trade wind sail, our default has been to goosewing with our jib hauled outboard as we can sail very deep compared with our genneker.

Yesterday seemed to be a shower day for everyone so needed to make more water today. It is a little tricky both to access and to operate the watermaker so every time the high pressure pump finally engages and the green light for good water comes on, I breath a sigh of relief. Hopefully not too many more days of that !

We celebrated a halfway point of sorts yesterday when the miles covered to date matched the miles to go to Saint Lucia. It doesn’t take account of the ducking and diving we are facing as the wind lightens but we try to grab any excuse to celebrate with mango juice and tonic water the mocktail of choice for the evening. We are almost at the end of our fresh fruit and veg but Maryrose doesn’t accept defeat lightly and somehow manages to winkle an extra meal or two out of the few pieces she has salvaged. Last night for example we had a starter of prawns and beetroot which was as unexpected as it was delicious.

No one is getting much reading done but I find listening to a book more relaxing anyway although the Seven Moons of Maali Almeida is anything but peaceful. We are trying to get some exercise in most days and although the terra bands hang unused and forlorn from the cockpit, the mats have been put to good use by a few of us anyway!

That’s all the news from the sweatshop for the time being.

Maurice