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Lexington - 3/6/17 7° 58' S 97°18' W



We had a good day today. We sailed a lot of the day with the asymmetrical spinnaker. At times the wind was light in the 4-5 knot range. Later in the afternoon winds were 7-9 knots. At that time we were doing 6-7 knots of boat speed.
Above was started earlier. Now it is midnight and I am finishing this post. The chances of squalls looked likely when we viewed the distant dark clouds and numerous boats had reported squalls. We have a reefed main and reefed jib 12-15 knots of wind and doing 5 knots of boat speed. We are still heading south west at 225 degrees. Our end waypoint is at 257 degrees. We are trying to make sure we go south enough to keep in good trade winds for the whole trip.
We probably use the term squall too loosely. Most sailors doing this just mean any pop up rain disturbance. There is probably a definition of squall when used as a weather term. It is probably defined by the strength of the winds. The problem with squalls is that there can be a quick marked increase in wind. One of our boats, a 51 foot Hylas was knocked down by a squall a year or so before this trip. A knock down is when your boat is blown over to where the mast touches the water. That is serious. His wife was down below. They were not well prepared. Wine glasses were breaking and she was barefoot with bleeding cuts. Boats are designed to have a righting moment. Most can be knocked down to about 125 degrees and come back to right themselves. After that they totally roll, that is do a 360 degree roll in the water. They are supposed to be designed so that the time to make the complete roll is short enough so that someone tethered into the cockpit will not drown. Boats like mine are also designed to round up into the wind if markedly over powered. Rounding up means that they turn into the wind thereby reducing the effect of the wind.
We are only 5 days into a 20 to 30 day trip. I plan to keep busy practicing and learning stuff. The navigation equipment is new and I need to learn the finer detail. I relearned some stuff about the SSB today. Use it or lose it. I will practice some celestial navigation. I can do a decent site but I need to do everything instead of plugging the site into your cell phone. This is also the first time I have been in the Southern Hemisphere so some of the calculations are slightly different.
Hope all is well with you and yours. I am still hoping for a fish. Bob

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