Another busy day!
First we had an unorthodox sail change that went a little something like this:
- Furl code 5
- Fish strike the second it’s furled
- Alan catches his first fish (more on that later)
- Ian has rather amusing wrestling match with said fish on aft deck, thank goodness for the ‘child catcher’ (a webbing dodger we have across the transom for safety)
- Sailor Ted found chilling out in spinnaker bag with his new friend, the sloth.
- Big yellow spinnaker up
- Alan skins and fillets his first fish
Since Alan caught his first fish it’s grown in both length and weight many times, surprising that we managed to land it really ;-) He had his first lesson in skinning and filleting the fish and did a great job. We’ve just eaten some of it for dinner which was a joint effort with yours truly (Ian) and the fishermen himself. It was ‘Mahi Mahi and vegetables poached in a coconut milk with chilli and ginger, served on a bed of rice’.
Today was also obligatory ocean crossing head shaving day which was done just before dinner. Turns out the number 3 on my new clippers refers to millimetres and not the grade, it’s closer to a number 1, oooops. Trying to convince Louis and Alan that it’s a rite of passage for all men, they remain dubious, I’ll get them in the end..
You could be forgiven for thinking we are in a different ocean from yesterday. The sea calmed right down, although still system driven and not long classic ocean swell. The wind also moderated and we were able to carry ‘big yellow’ for half of today and make some good progress. Back down to our bulletproof 3 reefs and code 5 for the night whilst general breeze is around 15-18kn there is some rain activity that has over 20kn of breeze when they pass and so a chilled night ahead planned on the good ship.
In terms of what we see ahead. Well that shift/gybe never came and we continued to make fairly good progress almost in the right direction. As an asymmetric boat that’s a blessing as we have to sail around 30-40 degrees (depending on wind strength and sea state) closer to the wind than dead down wind. That means we have a 60-80 degree ‘no go zone’ and sail more miles than a boat that is conventionally set up for sailing downwind with twin poled headsails or prevented main and poled headsail. It makes Rush a super fun boat in the right conditions but we won’t properly reap those benefits until we are blasting up and down island in the Caribbean. So what we see is this high pressure ridge head of us that’s forming and some weather models show a rapid extension South which means very little wind. Of course that’s not a good scenario for us so whether the shift comes or not we will likely dive South some time tomorrow. We will download the 0700 UTC weather files and see how it’s shaping up. All in all we are happy with progress, whilst it feels slow a fair bit of the time it also feels right. We’ve tucked away a fair few miles and there are plenty more fish to catch, don’t want it all over too soon.
Back to the subject of us being an asymmetric boat it got us to chatting about all the different shapes and sizes of boats people are doing the ARC in and why. There is for sure logic behind all of them. I’m sure many wonder why we’d do it in this kind of boat and the answer is for many reasons, some of them actually about the kind of boat we want to cruIse in generally . For us the sailing performance that is available if we want to tap into it is important but so also is the lifting keel. Our last boat was a similar size (40ft) with a very deep keel so sailed well but prohibitive for many harbours and cruising grounds. Rush has the best of both worlds, a deep keel (3m) when it’s down so sails well and very shallow (1.2m) when it’s up. The dream of sneaking up behind the reef and anchoring in the golden shallows gets closer every day! Having had the privilege to sail across a few times on different boats over the years Nia and I do in some ways miss rolling along downwind with a poled out set up on a gentle fishing and reading programme. There is many fine craft partIcipating this year that tick that box, can adjust sail plan easily according to wind strength and keep pointing straight at St Lucia. As I write it’s gentle here, we are turned right down for the night and sailing along under bright moonlight with the autopilot on and all is quiet. As we saw over the last days it doesn’t take a lot more wind and sea (mainly sea) to turn that on it’s head in this kind of boat and it becomes busy keeping her in the right mode. On balance though we are really enjoying it and as we get South look forward to more settled weather.
We’ve heard again today from ‘Our Peace’ who are most definitely here to cross in the maximum of comfort (she’s a massive catamaran and very comfy) and remove as many fish from the sea as they can! They had a beauty fishing story but won’t steal the thunder, sounded epic.
Ooooh, almost forgot, we saw a ship! That’s quite rare out here and it passed within 2 miles.
Good night from us all here at 24 degrees North 32 degrees West.
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