Wind from West of South and Carelessness leads to Hatch Disaster (well, not quite, but an expensive mistake nonetheless).
Well, I left you yesterday with the plain sails set (that's the white ones for you at home) bar the Mizzen, and our progress getting slower. So, unhappy by this, Elizabeth suggested the spinnaker, which I'd planned not to use with such a small crew. But the cloudless sky promised little in the way of surprises, and so it proved. Up went the kite without a hitch (spooky), even the dreaded sock peeled away quite smoothly, probably thanks to the rings that Rosie sewed into it during the winter. Back to the cockpit for some trim and grind, and leaving the steering to the autopilot, we gradually settled down to a reach, surging to 6 knots in not much more than 10 knots of wind. And believe me, getting 6 knots out of Cleone in that wind is doing well. As our confidence grew, the crew took over the helm and we surged on. The breeze began to fill in and veer, and by the afternoon we were going flat out at up to 8 knots - exhilarating stuff which has done wonders for our average speed. In late evening of the day before we had spotted a yacht just on our port side, which when called proved to be MORNING LIGHT, a single-hander (probably Dutch?) on his way to Panama and beyond. By late afternoon, we proved him to be a cutter of about the same length as CLEONE, because we caught him up! But the wind continued to freshen and once we'd passed him, and proved the point, we took in the spinnaker, again without incident. We called him up again, and as I write this morning he is just on the horizon ahead of us.
And the Wind from West of South? My only question is why? We are getting local forecasts from Curacao (Dutch possession) on the NAVTEX, we are getting reports from our fellow WARCers and very helpful routing from John Dyer back in Plymouth. But none of them mentioned Southerly or even west of southerly winds. Where have they come from and why the local effect?
I digress. Following the successful deployment of the spinnaker, and perhaps lulled into stupidity by it, in trying to tack the boat I managed to tear the central hatch off its hinges. I will spare myself (I confess I am the skipper) by not giving the grizzly details of the basic error I made that led to this. My only redemption lies in Will Brooks (who may be reading this), who two years ago, and before we set out on ARC 2005, made some emergency hatch covers in strong plywood, and equipped them with strong-backs and galvanized coach bolts. I managed to find the right one and it was soon bolted into place, covering the otherwise embarrassingly large hole in Cleone's deck. Then it was measuring up and sending an urgent E-mail back to Mission Control, in the hopes that we can get a new hatch-cover shipped out with a joining crew (maybe Alexander Anderson).
A quiet night with plenty of breeze in the right direction, a few ships heading our way, presumably from or to the Panama Canal, a singly gybe and change of course in the night (skipper's watch) and a reef taken in this morning. Life could be worse, though Elizabeth still reckons that the fore-deck is hard physical work!
ETA Panama is narrowing - with 340 miles to go we reckon sometime Thursday pm. But there is many a slip twixt cup and lip, and we are not sure if Quasar has passed us yet. We are Net Contollers today, so hopefully we will find this out before this leaves the ship.
Best wishes from us all,James, Chris and Elizabeth
Yacht CLEONE
11.50N 74.45W