Bolero - Day 5

Day 5

Day 5 ended as it had begun with a spectacular display from the sun. Night watches began at 19:00 Atlantic Adventure Eastern time. Stokey Woodall said at the ARC+ seminar that there are more stars in the skies than there are grains of sand, and early on in the night, you could see this to be true. The dark sky looked as it it had been spray painted with the finest of mists.

The night passed uneventfully without any further excitement from squalls. The Genoa was unfurled to the first reef and we started romping along. Things perked up a bit at 08:00 as a squall came bearing 30 knot winds and big seas. We quickly furled most of the gib, leaving the pocket handkerchief of sail that we had carried over night. We were unable to relax when the squall had passed as the temperature dropped again and the squall we had been monitoring came up from behind, this one Bering light rain, but slightly less wind.

Fortunately the other squalls around us passed to the north and south.

Nick downloaded the weather information from PredictWind and it was decided that we we should gybe onto port as we had reached the waypoint that Nick had put into the chart plotter marking the gybe point. This operation was complicated by the bowlines tying the chaffed furling line. The headsail was pulled in as far as it would go and then the furling drum was rotated manually to bring in the rest of the sail. We are due to gybe again on Saturday….. though Nick is debating an additional gybe tomorrow morning, depending on the weather routing tomorrow morning.

A well deserved cold drink was relished by all! It’s very odd being on the opposite gybe after 4 days. We hadn’t realised how used we had become to crawling out of the cockpit on the starboard side! We are no longer surfing down waves and rounding up, we have a more consistent quartering sea which brings different challenges from the rolling that we have experienced for the past few days. As I type this, both boys are obviously very comfortable with the motion of the boat, Ian is fast asleep in the saloon and Nick is sparko in the aft cabin.

The drum roll distance at 11:00 hrs Atlantic Adventure Eastern Time was 1480 miles, we are 162 miles nearer to our destination.

A general regroup was the order of the day after lunch, a tidy up around the galley and some laundry before the evening meal preparation.

Dinner is a different take on shepherds pie with rosti potatoes.

Night watches bed in at 19:00hrs.

Fair winds
Nick, Maz, Ian and Gwyn