Before we left Gran Canaria we visited ‘Spaceman Dan’, a very old friend who runs a surf school and lives in the hills. He gave us loads of home grown fruit and veg, including some amazing and very green bananas for us to eat during our crossing. We also duly went to the fruit and veg market and bought more ‘even greener’ bananas. Today every single banana went overripe all at once and at risk of us all turning yellow/being extremely regular we have been eating them like crazy. Sailor Ted decided his contribution would be to help make banana bread, the smell of which just woke me up 90 minutes before my watch!
Aside from that all is well onboard Rush. In anticipation of today’s increasing breeze and swell forecast we took it easy overnight and sailed nice and gently with mainsail only at times to get some fitful rest. Daybreak bought with it a good amount of breeze, 20-25kn and we are now seeing 2-3m seas and the breeze is holding solid, we expect for 48hrs or so and then a small wind and sea increase some time Friday. We have found a mode today that seems to work nicely with 3 reefs and our small Code 5 and are sailing along pretty well. One of the things about Rush having a big wide transom is that with large following seas she gets tossed up and thrown around sideways if you don’t keep some pace on. Then it’s trying to find a balance between making progress and things being far too hectic for a family boat with young children.
Making some good dents in the fridge contents so tomorrow could be Day 1 of fishing, reckon we can stop faster with a furling spinnaker up instead of one in a sock!
We’ve heard from our friends on ‘Our Peace’ and also ‘Kaizen’, both of whom are definitely on a fishing trip with a spot of sailing. Both report all is well and they are having a great time. Fun to get the position reports and see who’s close to who, who went South, who went North and who (like us) are just gybing down the rhumb line. Amazing to see a monohull smoking along out front ahead of a performance multihull, consistently faster. Different programme for us, we will stick to keeping it conservative and making cakes (much to Alan’s frustration, he wants to put the hammer down), it’s a long old way.
In Lanzarote we bought a small Xmas tree from IKEA (as you do on a boat heading to the Caribbean). There’s only so many places one can hide a Xmas tree on a small boat like this, but hide it we have. Thing is if we get asked once a day by Summer where it is we get asked 100 times. Wonder if she finds it before we get there!
Hope all is well for all of you on dry land.
All the best from us all on the good ship :-)
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