Scarlet Oyster - Scarlet Oyster Blog First 3 days

Hi All,

Sorry for no updates till now, been a bit busy and still am so this will be
a little short too!

The start was tricky with a fluky wind, the 20knot beat that was promised
actually sounded quite appealing! Everyone seemed to have their turn of
private wind (including us on occasion!).

Finally the wind reestablished from the promised S direction, a quick
inshore race battle ensured with us and our friends on Quokka, with neither
boat prepared to let the other get inshore too far towards the expected
shift of wind to the W. Great fun!

Over night the wind finally increased and the bouncy splashy sailing we were
expecting arrived. Pretty tough way to start a crossing!!! We decided to
sail towards Tenerife as I hear it is nice there! We decided to tack for
the S to avoid getting into to much wave action too early. Sailing with the
30knots and waves we already had seemed ample! Looking back at the ARC
brochure I must have missed the page on upwind sailing in gale force winds!

Finally by Monday avo the wind freed enough to allow an ease on the sails,
and by the evening we were even no longer under water all the time! It
would appear that although we have fixed most the leaks through the windows
and deck, there are a few new ones so we did have quite a lot of water
dripping on the bunks, nice!

Also it seems that somehow one of the catches on the forepeak got opened so
the fore peak was rather wet too, after removing an estimated 500kg of water
from the bow, we noticed a definite improvement in dryness on deck too!

After a night of jib reaching we decided to hoist the kite Tuesday morning.
All good for a few mins before a rigging issue stopped play, more on this
another time but I am pleased to report that after a day of innovation and a
few expensive phone calls not to mention a lot of Alex's time up the rig, we
are back at full strength, hopefully...

Kite up again now and it feels like we are making pretty good progress.

All on board are good especially after a few hours kip at last!

Seems that Vaquita are properly sending it! Great work guys, the record
could yet be yours so long as the breeze holds. Fingers crossed for Andreas
and the guys on board!

All for now

Ross