Wind's up....!!
Chelone's travels.....
John and Susie Blair.
Mon 26 Nov 2012 11:56
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N22:53.00 W21:17.00
As per forecast, a lovely fifteen knot breeze has
filled in from the north west by north early this morning so the engine is
resting again for now. Life onboard during the day revolves around sail trimming
(wind goes up and down and changes direction) watch keeping (apart from some
passing lights last night, nowt seen for over 24hrs), reading, playing
music, messing with the fishing line.....and snacking/cooking
food.
Ross and Louise took a dip in the ocean as us guys
watched them.... a bit chilly for that yet, but fair play to them! They
clambered aboard refreshed and a little worn out I think after trying to
keep up with the driffing boat... (I can't help thinking that an
opportunity was lost there, let's face it, more food for us remaining
onboard!)
As evening approaches we have a meal together
before settling into the overnight watch routines, two hours on, six off. We
have it so that if you do the 6pm - 8pm slot tonight you'll do the 8pm - 10pm
tomorrow etc so nobody gets stuck with the same routine. I'm happiest when it
comes around for my turn to do 10pm - 12pm then 6am - 8am, not too
late to bed, six hours sleep then up to see the sun rise!
As I write now it's 11am, Monday 26th. The sun is
shining, there's still a lovely 10-15knt breeze out of the north and we're
making almost top speed sailing on a broad reach at 6.5 - 7.0knts with a 2 - 3m
ocean swell under our keel.
Still no fish! Ross and myself are being
mercilessly teased and taunted by the other crew members, ah well, when we do
catch summat (and we will) we'll let the others try some....for a modest
fee!
What else is news? Oh aye, the little tear in the
leach of our Genoa (Headsail) is now about 10 feet long so we'll have to douse
it for it to be stitched up. When I send this Blog we'll download
another Grib (weather) file and so long as there's no indication of strong winds
for today we'll maybe fly the Gennaker while the Jenny's sewn up. The
girls did their washing on deck at the bow with dolphins as company which made
the chore very enjoyable.
Thanks go out to Susie's Dad for keeping us updated
on world events and of course the Rugby scores! So nice to hear about the
rubbish weather back home too, wind and rain, flood warnings and the
like.....keep em' coming Geoff!!
Thanks also to Mark Hicks, Gavin the Whelk, Rob
and Sam, Rhiannon, Joanne, Steve Sula, and my very special Brazilian
friends, Ocean Sailors Dorival and Catarina from s/y 'Luthier' great to hear
from you!
So that's about it for now, apart from the dolphins
we've seen little else in the sea, no Whales as yet but we'll keep you posted.
Hopefully we'll have a fish before the next blog....while we've still some
vegetables to go with it!
We're just defrosting some chicken breasts to have
Sweet n' Sour tonight so we're looking forward to that, also there's plenty of
Smoked Bacon, fresh Cheese, Onions, Potatoes etc, etc
Bye for now, JB.
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