Sailing around the World ( presently at sea between Bali and Coco's Keeling Islands)
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Wed 15 Sep 2010 08:45
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TUESDAY 14th SEPTEMBER
2010 ( Aileens Birthday )
The night was a clear starrey night, with lots of
fishing boats around and plenty of lightning in the distance, ( so long as
it stays in the distance)
During the night, kallopie had a boat follow them,
so the rest of the fleet closed ranks with kallopie and the uninvited guests
took off.
There was a lot of lightning during the night, all
well away to the north over Java..
It is lovely to look at the shimmering lightning at
a long distance, and long may it stay at that distance. ( although , we were
told to expect
some thunderstorms during the
trip........
09.00hrs RADIO NET, For the first time
on the trip, we were Duty net Controller for the fleet on the SSB radio., and we
were heard loud and clear across the whole
fleet. We were delighted with ourselves, and all on Aileens
birthday.
Fats should be able to radio us now, He's a
great believer in the SSB.
We spent the morning cleaning, and having naps,
these little naps are great. keep the energy topped up,
12.00hrs Distance travelled in 24 hrs,
was 164 miles and we were 37 miles south of the rum line.
We decided to have dinner at dinner time, the
middle of the day. so Aileen made a cottage pie, and we ate it all in the
starlight restaurant,
and we are happy to say, the standards and quality
are still as good as ever.
We had the KITE flying and making good progress ,
although we were closing up on the rum line, not exactly what we wanted,
but the wind
was too far forward ,so we just had to follow the
breeze.
Neil discovered a fish swimming along under the
transome as we scooted along at 7 / 8 knots, the fish was only about
8" long and had hoops
around him,, It looked a little like a pilot fish,
they usually swim alongside whales, so maybe this little fellow thought we were
a whale,
We tried in vain to catch him with our fish net,
but he only laughed at our best efforts.
18.30 Darkness fell and we had a 1/4 moon
high up in the sky, There was " Sirrius" also, following the Sun down. and
of course
"Orion's belt" was clearly visable along with the
" Southern cross". Skipper has to be exact with the stars, If he gets
it wrong, he will get ticked off by
Ingrid in Germany. Hi Ingrid !
19.30 BANG ! at first we thought we hit
something, untill next thing we see is the KITE floating down into the sea,
bloody hell, Ohhh my gawd,
whats gone wrong there ! and to make matters worse,
its blowing 25 knots at this stage. Ahhhhhhh , we dont to believe
this.
We had to move fast, the blinking thing was sinking
fast, not to mention it was now going out behind and ,
ohhhh the instinct kicked in and skipper turned the
boat around in a circle to starboard , encircling the sail and making it easier
to haul
up on board, Thats the theory, the
practice was much different, It took us 2 hours to haul the thing back on board
, inch by inch,
and I mean inch by inch,
Each time the boat rolled to starboard, we grabbed
as much sail as possible, jammed it down onto the rail, and as the boat
rolled the opposite way, it automatically hauled up the sail with it. We repeated this proceedure hundreds of
times untill the sail was all on board
and we also felt that we had emtied the whole
ocean, ( remember, this sail is 2,600 sq. feet. the size of a good
big house. )
Skipper lost 1/2 stone, Terry lost 1 stone ,
and Neil lost his marbles. and Aileen did the
photo's, well someone has to do it ! We were wrecked.
And whats worse, it all happened because
skipper cut off 1m from the spinniker halyard earlier and obviously did not
do the knot right.
He will have to go to the " Dunce's "
corner.
After a rest, we bagged the soggy KITE and then set
up a goose wing arrangment, and off we went on our merry bloody
way..
Who ever said this is an easy and relaxing
sport. My friend Roddy says its just another form of stress.
Ahhhh, sure , we wouldent swop for all the
world... ( ooops, let me think about that one )
21.00hrs, Skipper had to do Radio Net
again, and said hello and goodnight to most of of the fleet before settling
into our night watches,
21.00hrs / 00.00hrs
.....................................................Terry
00.00hrs /
03.00hrs.......................................................Aileen,
03.00hrs /
06.00hrs........................................................Skipper
06.00.00 /
09.00hrs.........................................................Neil
Thjats all for now.
Signed :- Stephen
Hyde ( skipper )
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