During the last
twenty-four hours, we have been dealing with a faulty Furlex, making best speed
towards St Lucia and exploring the crews' phobias.
It was Louisa
who made the giveaway discovery. Whilst on the foredeck carrying out a
deck-level rigging inspection, she fortuitously found a stainless-steel
machine-screw. She carefully put it in her pocket and brought it back to the
cockpit where it then lay for the skipper's inspection. The Skipper took one
horrified look at it, pocketed it and took himself up to the foredeck, even
remembering to clip onto the Jackstay before setting off. Furling the genoa had
become difficult, and now the reason became all too apparent. At the top of the
lower swivel of the Furler is a small black cap. This is held on by two machine
screws, which also do a much more important job, that of preventing the foil
from dropping into the furler and jamming it. One of the two specially machined
screws lay in the skippers pocket, and the other had vanished, probably
long-since, either somewhere in the Bay of Biscay or the sea off A Coruna. By
now the furler was properly jammed, so the only option was to let the genoa out
fully and take it down completely. For once the wind and sea were kind, and soon
Kaya and the Skipper had the genoa trussed to the guard-rails. The single proper
screw was forced back into place (he means screwed carefully back until it was
sufficiently tight - Ed) and another similarly sized bolt secured tightly into
the other size as a temporary measure. Fingers have been crossed ever since; we
hope this will get us safely to Rodney Bay. If you read it at all, the above
probably took 30 seconds to read. In actuality it took all four of us 2 ½ hours
to sort out!
The sailing has
been straightforward. The Log faithfully records wind-shifts, squalls, pouring
but warm rain, reefs being put in and shaken out and every so often a gybe. It
also tells of bilges being inspected and occasionally pumped out and the engine
being run to re-charge the batteries. Apart from the Furlex problem, there was
nothing untoward reported. The bottom line, however, is that we sailed 121 miles
and yet we are only 116 miles closer to St Lucia. What happened to the missing 6
miles, you may well ask, and Skipper is also anxious to find out. When
questioned, the crew shrug their shoulders and say nothing.
As far as
feeding goes, breakfast we take on the run. The 0400-0800hrs watch normally eat
before the end of their watch, and the on-coming watch as soon thereafter as
they are awake enough to do so. Lunch and supper we take together in the
cockpit. We discuss the day's happenings, remind each-other of how good or bad
we have been and decide on tactics and sail-plans for the coming few hours.
Around these topics we sort out international, scientific, social and
environmental problems, some big and some small, but always failing to record
and send out any of the answers that we produce. One of today's topics was
Phobias. We learnt that: Louisa has a banana phobia; Francesca-the-mate cannot
deal with coffee grounds; Kaya-the-Kenyan cannot abide tinned tuna or anything
to do with goats apart from goatmeat itself; and, although the Skipper is not
very fond of snakes, he actively loathes salt-water crocodiles (Salties, mate.
Gotta love them - Ozzie Ed). Sadly amongst the memories of all that happened on
this epic voyage, I don't suppose we will have helped any of the crew get over
any of these.
Meanwhile, all
are well on-board, the sun keeps shining and we remain more or less on course
for St Lucia.
With very best
wishes and love to you all,
James,
Francesca, Louisa and Kaya
Yacht
Cleone
At
sea
Position at
1200UTC on 09 Dec 2024:
N19deg05min
W046deg15min