Cleone - CLEONE Leg 7 Day 6 -We're Nearly There!

Cleone lifted up her skirts and flew.  And we've arrived in Suworrow!

 

For some reason, Suwarrow has moved from being dead up-wind for the first couple or three days of light weather, and dead down-wind for the last three days of proper sailing weather.  And I know which I'd rather have!  Nevertheless, this direct downwind stuff has given us its challenges.  No sailing boat likes running dead down-wind.  For a start it's slower than sailing 20 degrees or so either way, second it puts you in ever-present danger of gybing (the risks of which we try and minimize by using a preventer on both the main and mizzen booms), and third, given the first two, it means gybing every so often to maintain your rhumb-line course.  This is how we we have spent the last day of our leg to Suworrow.  And now we have arrived, the chafe on the spinnaker guys has to be seen to be believed!  They wil be a foot shorter when we leave.

 

This time yesterday, we were in some doubt as to whether we could make Suwarrow in daylight today.  But someone must have heard our plea.  Throughout the night we have had fine Trade Wind conditions, with the wind coming in at fifteen to twenty knots from the South East.  So we kept the spinnaker up all night, and we've flown along.

 

So much so, that we crossed the finsih line at 1215 local time (that's 2215GMT to you UK types), wriggled our way through the shallow and un-marked pass, and we are now at anchor in the most idyllic spot you could imagine in the Suworrow Lagoon, and surrounded by our World ARC friends.  And a cold beer awaits me as soon as I've sent this off.

 

So that's it for now.