Xenial - Day 18 - HALF WAY

Yes the title is purposefully in all caps, we are very happy to have reached this milestone. Today, after 6 days, 1 hour and 10 minutes, our DTD (distance to destination) indicator read 1'100 nm. The Swedes broke into song, and more precisely they sang "For he's a jolly good fellow".

But let's begin from the start. We had a good night, albeit really slow and kept losing positions because we were without foresail. Still too much wind to hoist the code zero or the gennaker. From a sailing perspective then, we were a little demotivated and didn't do much throughout the morning. But our crew is never idle and always needs a new project.

Please make some noise for our newly formed engineering committee! Ulrik and Janne are the two members, and Gustaf is a permanently seated observer (read - he sits and looks at what they do). The project du jour was to fix our bilge pump. It pumps alright but actually doesn't send any water out. After a full morning of lifting different sections of the floor to follow pipes etc, they decided that dismantling the pump would not be a great idea, as we most likely wouldn't have spare parts on board. So the pump needs to be operated manually, every two hours 20 pumps.

This provided an excellent opportunity for me to learn to count to 20 in Swedish. I knew 1-10, but for some reason 11-20 has a few irregular forms and I keep forgetting them. Encouraged by this, the crew taught me to count all the way to 100. They have also been trying to teach me to pronounce Carl-Johan correctly. Apparently I pronounce it the Norwegian way, not the Swedish one. I take solace in the fact that CJ cannot pronounce Maria Vittoria either.

The early afternoon saw a small effort from the fishing committee, but still nothing. We have become quite good at fishing seaweeds though. Our hopes for tuna sashimi for dinner were not fulfilled (but Janne had some surprises for us, more on that later).

Eventually the sailing and trimming committee became quite frustrated with our reduced speed situation and decided to do something about it. I was told we were going to gybe, but much more than a gybe took place. They can't fool me anymore ;)
We gybed and then took down 3 reefs on the main sail. It's really small right now. For those of you that are familiar with Xenial's boom furling system, you know that bringing down the main sail and furling it correctly to avoid it ripping the next time it is hoisted, is a rather delicate and time consuming operation, which is carried out under the watchful eye of Captain Ulrik. Let me tell you, keeping the boat at the wind for a long period of time in this waves is not fun.
Once the main sail was reefed, phase 2 began. With the mainsail reduced to having only a stabilizing function, the captain was comfortable putting up the code zero. All seemed okay until a knot was discovered in the sail, and the whole project was massively derailed. We had to lie the sail flat on the deck, and unfurl il all to figure out the issue. This is no easy feat considering the sail is longer than the boat, and the wind kept trying to catch it. The 5 men of the crew all sat on the side of the boat holding this big white sail and unfurling it slowly, only to refurlit it shortly thereafter. If I hadn't know any better, I would have thought them women washing linens on flat stones in a river (I have no idea what they are called in English, you can google "lavandaia" in Italian to better understand what I mean). It made for a very funny picture and I do have photos. After Operation Laundry was completed, we hoisted the code zero and to everyone's joy it unfurled wonderful
ly in
the wind. We picked up some speed and the boat is a bit more stable.

The highlight of the day however was the delicious dinner Chef Janne had been preparing all day to celebrate half way. When we woke up, he was already working on a sauce reduction, followed by a curd. Our curiosity was peaked! For dinner he prepared an amazing steak with roasted potatoes and Bearnaise sauce! It's one thing to be an excellent chef on land, but to be able to do the same at sea, with this waves and 20 knots of wind, is mind boggling. Wow! And then dessert came along and we were left speechless - he made mini tartes au citron! He put the lemon curd on a digestive biscuit, then covered in merengue (which he had whipped by hand, we don't have a food processor on board) and finally took a blow torch to it. Divine! To top off our celebrations the Captain opened a bottle of red wine, the first drink since we left Cape Verde.

All in all, a memorable day, and we can't wait to show you some of the footage from it.

Over and out,
Mavi