Donald
With Sam’s arrival in Las Palmas on Saturday night the team is in place.
Sailor Sam
Well I got the port hand flyer I wanted but so did the rest of the fleet. All boats clear at the start line which is just as well as OCS (over course start) entails a 3 hour time penalty. We started out with white sails on a broad reach but we quickly hoisted the cruising chute and kept up with an Open 40. As the wind went further behind we switched to full spinnaker and then we were off; champagne sailing in warm sunshine whilst the clouds hovered over the peaks of Gran Canaria.
Bob, Glo and Donald took the 1st watch at 8pm but within a couple of hours Ash and I were on deck bleary eyed helping with an urgent spinnaker drop in the dark as the wind became a little squally. For the rest of the night we sailed with whites and the headsail poled out to port.
I saw my first ever shooting star during our 12 – 4am watch and we could see the lights of Africa twinkling over our port beam. The moon was full, so a careful look-out for were-wolves was made…. Very strangely there seemed to be a perfect circular ring-shaped gap in the clouds surrounding the moon, had we stumbled upon the hole in the ozone layer?
The morning brought hot, hot weather and it is all we can do to keep cool and not get sunburnt. Spinnaker was re-hoisted and we have been playing with the waves down towards our waypoint just to the west of the Cape Verdes. Fantastic.
Ash
As I lay in my bunk exhausted from wrestling a huge flying bed sheet in the middle of the night, I was soon to be nursed to sleep by a soft moaning, creaking and the sound of muffled voices,
And all this was from Glo,s cabin . OVER
Glo
Is Ash intimating that I SNORE? It has been known I will admit. We had a most amazing send off from Las Palmas with a band with jugglers and two men walking on stilts following them down each pontoon. The yachts sailed out of the marina to the sound of hooters and horns. The breakwater just before the exit was black with people who were waving, cheering, and wishing us all good luck. Emotional, some such small yachts with such a long way to go. What Ash also heard last night was some swearing, from me. When we had the spinnaker episode , it was shoved down below in haste. For some reason it has always be my lot to pack the darn thing back in it’s bag, all 72 foot of it, I hate it. Especially when the boat is pitching and rolling it, is really hard. I may have uttered a few choice words wishing it had flown away into the night when the bottom half got temporarily detached. However in went up perfectly in the morning. This is real sailing now!