Wednesday, 15th September 2010Again, another beautiful starry night to be at sea, still plenty of lightning off to the north. I wont repeat myself tonight...
Aileen loves to read on her watch, while skipper finds things to do, or in lots of cases, just lie down on the aft deck and stare at stars.
09.00hrs RADIO NET Destiny are duty net controllers today, and Thomas did the official business, He joined the boat in Darwin and is skipper until they arrive in Cocos Islands. We are 3rd boat in the fleet, with the rest not very far behind, the wind is very fickle, and with a lumpy sea, its difficult to get any sort of speed out of the boat. Skipper did a chart and marked the position of all the boats every day, so we can see at a glance where everybody is located relative to ourselves.
We are about 27 miles south of the rum line, all our weather forecasters are telling us to keep south, and looking at our grib file (weather diagrams) on the computer, it looks as if that's good advice. So we are staying down there, but the wind is still light.
10.00hrs We turned on our high pressure fresh water pump and gave the KITE a good hosing down. We have to run the generator to do this, so we made some water at the same time. This uses about 250L in 15 minutes, so making water at the same time is a good idea. We left the kite dry for a while and then set about checking if any damage had been done, lucky for us. No damage done. So then we set about rebagging the KITE, this is not easy on a boat, mostly because of all the little strings holding the wing. That whole operation took about 3 hours, when we were all done, we hoisted the wet Kite up the mast. Phew! what a job, but we got there in the end and after a while, when the sail dried out, it worked as it should do, hauling us along behind.
12.00hrs Distance traveled ..................310 miles in 48 hrs, ohhhhhh very slow for us.
14.30hrs Dinner consisted of roast rack of lamb, creamed potatoes, and baked beans, yum, yum. The lamb was the best ever, so tender... delicious! Of course the skipper thinks it was his cooking.
We had a few naps during the afternoon.
18.00hrs The wind died off to about 6knots, so shortly after, we started the engine and motored in a SW direction, to get further south.
20.00hrs We had a light snack, lots of chat, especially recounting the last 24 hrs
Night watches tonight :- 10.00hrs / 00.00hrs ..................................... Neil
00.00hrs / 02.00hrs......................................Terry
02.00hrs / 04.00hrs......................................Skipper
04.00hrs / 06.00hrs......................................Aileen
06.00hrs / 08.00hrs......................................Neil
That's all for now.
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)