Dolfijn - Dolfijn's ARC - Days 10-12

Looking back over the logs, there were a couple of incidents that got missed. There was the "splashdown" in the first couple of days - a splashdown being similar to a knockdown, where the boat gets knocked so far on it's side the sails touch the water, a splashdown is when the boat gets pushed over on it's side and creates a lot of splashed water. Why was this notable? Because one of the biggest splashes made a bee line directly for the open hatch in the middle of the boat and down onto the bunk where Dawn was sleeping. Fed up with this, she swapped bunks and a couple of days later another wave went in the hatch the other way and got her again!! There was also the sad case of greivous boatily harm committed by Joe when for no apparent reason he went mad and hit the boom with his head. Fortunately there was no serious damage and the boat and boom are recovering slowly. Seriously, though it was a near miss and a sobering moment.

For those reading the boat log who aren't of a boaty nature I'll list a few descriptions of terms that I have used to help understand, if that is possible, any of the stuff I put down.
MAST - big sticky uppy thing pointing to the sky that sails get attached to.
BOOM - not so big sticky sideways thing that attaches to the mast and swings from side to side, normally with a big white sail, and occasionally a plumbers head.
SHROUDS - wires holding up the sticky uppy thing at the sides
FORESTAY - wirer holding up the sticky uppy thing from the front, also has big white sail attached and (purposely) wrapped/unwrapped around it.
SPINNAKER - big baggy colourful sail usually billowing in front of the boat but occasionally wrapped around the shrouds
BILGES - the grim dark depths under the floorboards where sweaty socks and other unmentionables go to hide on long trips. Also where any water that gets into the boat gathers and is pumped out either automatically or when auto not working then manually.
HALYARD - bit of rope used to hoist sails up when they are to be used
SHEET - bit of rope similar to halyard but used to pull sails in or out to the correct position for optimum speed.

Day 10
Still barrelling along under white sails slowly recovering our strength when another disaster strikes - the gas alarm goes off and shuts down the gas before dinner is cooked! Gas on a boat is a bit of a scary thing as the consequences acn be fairly terminal, so it is a relief for us all to ahve to Joe on board who is a plumber and former gas installer so we ar egoing to be OK. First things first is to use the sniff test, but none of us can smell anything except each other - things a re getting a bit ripe the further west we get! Next one we switch on power to the gas system but do not set cooker going......beep beep beep - the sound that means it's muesli for dinner!! Joe then moved on to more technical methods of detection using soapy water and found no leaks. Finally, and I'm glad I missed this one because I was on deck, he went for the old fail safe of gas fitters - using a naked flame! Now I grant you that it is likely to be the most successful at finding a leak, but perhaps not the method that leaves much to fix afterwards? Whatever, leaving a coupld of cowering crewmen down below Joe pronounced that he thought the sensors were at fault, probably some cooking fat dropped into one of them, and that we should tape them up so that we can cook - to date we are still in one piece and enjoying hot food and drink! Despite all this we have startd to move off the bottom of the race leader board - perhaps we haven't made such a hash of the tactics after all?

Daily Miles = 176nm

Day 11
Up to now for most of us, showering consisted of using wet wipes to get rid of the worst of the smells and sweat, but when time and conditions allow we move onto the luxury of the bottled water shower. Taking all but swim cossie off and movnig forward to the middle of the deck, proceed to wet yourself with a 2 ltr bottle of salt water, soap as best you can then wash off with another 2 ltr bottle of salt water. Finish off by using 2 ltr of fresh water to wash as much salt off as possible to prevent rashes developing once dried. Reason for doing this is that fresh water is precious on board, despite having a water maker that is (touch wood) working very well making the sweetest drinking water out of the sea water. Try it at home and you'll be surprised how much water you waste in a shower at home - whilst we sit here and dream of all the water we're going to waste/indulge in when we get to St.Lucia!!! Anyway the seas moderated today so it was up with the blue spinnaker and off we trotted. Yet again we get to move up the leader board which is a great morale boost.

Daily Miles = 170nm

Day 12
Another great day, seas moderated so that we managed to get our biggest spinnaker up for a while, over night there were some amazing "shooting stars" with blue and white streaks. We've also had a young looking seagull trying to land on our pinnakers at the top - fortunately it moves too much for him to try too hard or he might tear it with his claws. Another bird keeps following us as well, almost black it has the shape of a tern, but he keeps doing crazy acrobatics over the waves just skimming off the tops. Later in the night dark clouds started gathering and rolling on down towards us with lightening forking out all over. This led to the waves becoming more confused and acceleration of the wind up to 30kts at times which led us to think we might be better with just white sails as it is more controllable - just! We had a bit of a wild couple of hours rocking and rolling, nobody getting much sleep but in the end it all slid on past us and it was soon back to nice easy "downhill" (with the wind behind us) sailing. The sad news of the day being that our neighbours from Las Palmas, an Irish boat from Galway, had broken their boom, and although they were continuing they couldn't push as hard as they have been doing - still all safe aboard so could be a lot worse!

Daily Miles = 164nm