Log Day 7 -JACK Rowland Smith Fishgate and a Forced Gybe...

Day 7 and Sunday, so a shorter blog on the day of rest, which the crew need to be honest. A good day yesterday but overnight the wind veered Easterly and forced us to gybe.......

Overall yesterday was one of those very rare sailing days where we all sat in the cockpit, we made no sail adjustments all day and we just sailed along with the speed high and miles ticking away.

“fishgate” hotted up and now fishing is banned. First off, and yes it has finally happened, John actually managed to catch a fish!!! A rather nice Mahi Mahi and so joviality started and banter hotted up between Laurel and Hardy even before the fish was landed. But landed it was. All the while no one had checked Ben’s line and when we did we found he had caught one too but, alas, on the haul in the Mahi Mahi escaped. John called it a day at that point declaring some sort of victory and Ben, mainly because he couldn’t be bothered to reel his line in, left his out. Late afternoon and the decision was then made to pull Ben’s line in and tidy the boat for the night, at which point a huge tuna attacked Ben’s lure and Ben was left pulling in his line in with a 12kg Tuna attached to it. The grappling hook was lost on fish retrieval but with cordiality restored, Laurel and Hardy worked together to get the fish on board and we now have more fresh fish than we can shake a rod at. No more fishing for a while on good ship Jack. So we ate Mahi Mahi last night and Chef Sue has a fully stocked fridge full of tuna for the next few days!!!!

The only other point of note is that Skipper and First Mate, because of their cleanliness requirements, need to use the mashing machine (have you ever heard of anything like it?). Anyway, to date it has been too rough and the discussion have now started as to how calm it needs to be to ensure an unbalanced spin cycle is not created on this finally tuned “cut and shove” affair that is Jack’s washing machine. First World problems and problems I don’t have with my bowl of water and washing powder.

Progress - we made good routing yesterday and averaged well over 7.0 knots as reported in the ARC official results we pick up every lunchtime. However we now enter the tricky bit and the wind started veering late yesterday evening. A special mention goes to our “Volvo Race like” routing manager John Crisp, who lives in Spain. John is happy to send us weather and position reports all through the night. However because he lives in Spain we get nothing out of him before 3.00pm!!!!! Thanks John because it has been so helpful.

Anyway poor John has been pulling his hair out and screaming down the proverbial phone “go south” to us for two days now. And oh we wanted to go believe me but because of our boom issue we have been forced to just stick on port gybe and sail as low as possible. Well it was decision point last night, when we hit 300 degrees true and we needed to be steering nearer 250 we knew we had two choices, start to sail back where we came from or gybe. So at 3.00am, in what can only be described as the pitchess of black with no moon, we gybed on to port and then spent the next four hours bang around in a confused sea with an unprotected boom. We assessed the boom first thing and unfortunately our fears were justified, the boom has a huge bend in it now from the four hour onslaught and left on its own it will just break. We have maintained our double reefed main but we have swapped the main sheet for a rope from the end of the boom to the back of the boat and tightened up on the preventer to try and stop the whole thing moving. The wind is light but the boat is still rolling badly and putting strain on the boom. We will have to see, no realistic turning back for us now so if it breaks we will have to figure out some other rig options to get us to St Lucia. On the positive side, we do believe the boom should be structurally ok on port gybe and we are now heading south again to allow us to port gybe all the way to St Lucia.

A bit of positive news, after a full system reboot and some lemsips, George seems to be steering properly and has done a great job overnight.

So tricky few days for us now. Our ship’s clock will go back another hour tomorrow and we are expecting two light wind days before we get to the trades. We think we have two days to our half way point, expecting to make it on Tuesday afternoon/evening.

Fingers crossed the boom survives otherwise we are going to be in rebooking flights territory. Speed is compromised because of the rig issues but such is life we will keep going as best we can and on the positive side, we have Laurel and Hardy to keep the fridge stocked, we have the skipper’s Home design water maker and fresh bread options. Life could be worse.

All the best

Nick (chair of the Boom Inspection Unit)