Our bodies, that is, not our engine! Although, okay, I promise to stop going on about the heat (or I could describe it in detail for those of you in England who've forgotten what it feels like!) We are moving along our way, heading SW to W depending on the wind direction. Trades still haven't really developed yet but they're coming. (hopefully!) We've had the parasail and the jenny up and are getting the hang of both of them. Although last night we had a bit of a disaster with the jenny.... It was Jillian's watch and I was asleep in bed. I was woken up by Jilli screaming, banging on my window and shouting 'Alice!!!!!!!' I dashed upstairs, still dizzy with sleep, convinced mum had fallen overboard and about to launch the jon buoy. While my body was about to do this, my groggy mind was trying to work out why the man-over-board alarm hadn't gone off, then why there were two people up front on deck, and finally, why I could hear mum's voice. I was very confused.
What had happened was that the wind had got up so that the boat felt too pressed with the jenny and reefed mainsail up so mum and Jilli decided to take it down. They rolled it up fine, but before they could take it down, a sudden gust of wind from behind wrapped the rolled up sail all the way around our forestay several times. They attempted to take the foot off to unwind it, resulting in almost losing the foot. This was the stage where they called me, and as I made my way up to the foredeck, they were sitting on sail, clutching at handfulls in an attempt to bring it down, before a gust of wind would blow it back out again (almost taking them with it!) With three of us on the sail we managed to pull it down finally, opened the hatch to my cabin, and dumped the sail inside. No casualties either to boat or person, just knackering! The halyard was so wrapped around the forestay and therefore the jib that we decided to sail just under main for the rest of the night.
Mum and I untangled it at first light this morning, and we now have the parasail up and are flying along relatively nicely seeing as there is still only about 10 knots of breeze!
Its a shame we had to stop in the CVs as it does take a few days to get adjusted again to night watch patterns. We are still just getting used to it again, although have had very little seasickness this time!
We are working on cultivating our tans, and trying not to eat our body weight in chocolate. As per usual.
Triple D standing by...