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Hummingbird - Monday night - feeling a bit wooly



Good evening from Hummingbird. We are currently running down wind with the kite up just on the edge of the African continental shelf, anticipating a gybe offshore at some point tonight. The sea has flattened out inshore here nicely and the breeze is a steady force 4 from the NNE. After last night’s guy shenanigans we had a fast and straightforward sail through to midday today, making 200nm on the log. The wind dropped mid morning so after a lovey greek salad with pesto bread we hoisted the kite.
It was a tricky wind angle, we wanted to hold port gybe to keep us away from the wind hole further offshore, but we don’t really want to close too much with the African coast in case we find fishing fleets and other obstacles. With the swell this afternoon and light airs we accidentally wrapped the spinnaker around the forestay and it had to come down. Thankfully we caught it before it got too set in, and managed to pull it down the forestay gathering it in as we went. We all set about unwinding it and then started the process of scrumpling and wooling it ready for the re-hoist. Wooling the kite is something everyone is always keen to see, once! It basically involves gathering the sail in from both of its long edges, tightly rolling the tapes in on themselves (we call it ‘scrumpling’) and trussing it up like a string of sausages. It allows us to pull the kite up to the top of the mast without it opening half way up.

Due to a slight provisioning oversight we only have one ball of wool to last until the Cape Verdes. It should be enough but we were careful not to use too much, especially Erika who is busy knitting a Christmas jumper for someone and has the only other source of wool on board. Once it was woolled we were getting ready for the hoist when catastrophe struck and the precious ball of wool flew out of Michelle’s pocket and over the side!

Holly immediately directed everyone into an MOB drill and we managed to retrieve it with a boat hook a few minutes later, disaster averted, phew! We are now much more careful with our soggy but precious ball of wool, and have had to discuss what we would do if we ran out. Erika’s Christmas jumper is safe, the wool is far too good and strong to use on the kite, but there was mention of using a certain mop-head mascot named Shaggy, but we’d have to get past Nicky first…

Hummingbird out for the night.



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