Sailing is fun?!
ULA
John & Jackie Richards
Sun 7 Dec 2008 14:34
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Position 016:36.099N
043:23.168W
Your captain's here again -now christened
Captain Grumpy by the crew for a tough day yesterday on little sleep.
Now you need to understand that the dream of
sailing the Atlantic this way is that you put your running sails up somewhere
near the Canaries and' except for a few tweeks, take them down in St Lucia. Not
so Ula's Atlantic. Lets take yesterday as a good example. We spent the night
under spinnaker alone as it was fairly light wind and we could see all about
that there was no danger of a squall. The moon is up now and its
light really helps for over half the night. At 6.00 am we were bowling
along under slightly more wind at 15 knots when bang the shackle holding the
tack of the spinnaker fell apart. ( another £35 in the boat renovation fund).
I am not on watch but jump up to help Adrian
and Jackie take the spinney down - no damage to the spinney thank
goodness. As its dark we launch the genoa poled
out until the sun comes up, when we launch the spinney again. By 10.00am
its now too windy for the spinney so we down that and put up twin headsails. We
dodge a couple of squalls ( Howards getting quite good of working out where
these little "b's " now go.) Then the wind changes and twins won't work as we
are not downwind so we pole out the genoa again as the wind is getting up
and a very black area of cloud is looking very ominous from behind. I read the
forecast again and sure enough they talk about a frontal trough not quite where
we are but close enough. The front hits so we roll in the genoa as wind could be
up to 40 knots. Torrential rain for two hours to dusk. Poodle along under genoa
waiting for the rain to abate: luckily wind only gets to 25 knots. Rain becomes
drizzle for another two hours and then the sky brightens and we see the
moon. Wind now pipes up north westerly. Hang on that's head winds in the
Atlantic. Someone is not happy up there. Wind slowly comes round to north and we
put up the main at watch change at 8.00pm.Great sail for 4 hours on a beam reach
to midnight in F3 to 4. Watch change at midnight sees wind more fickle so Jackie
and Adrian play with the sails to keep the speed up as best they can but
eventually it dies and they turn on the motor for an hour (what little wind
there is is from the West!) We have set ourselves a 4 hour limit per day
from now to the finish or we run out of fuel. Morning dawns with a lovely
clear day and a fitful northerly. We can manage about 5 knots on this.
So I reckon thats an ARC's worth of sail
changing in one day and 4 hours lost sleep. Hence new nickname. Good news is
managed to sleep lots last night courtesy my watch and Jackie doing some cover
and now in better mood. Thinking next time I will offer more sacrificies to the
wind god. ( Sorry Jeff and thanks for the email)
Over to the first mate and vice
skipper.
John has pretty well covered the sailing - no
chance of rest for the crew as we seem to have been constantly sail changing and
trimming for several days with the weather going from gorgeous sunshine, moonlit
nights with millions of stars (the moon is amazing - almost translucent) to
squalls and pouring rain with no visibility.
And what of the crew? My Bat watch has
rechristened itself the 'Wet Watch' as we always seem to be on when the squalls
and frontal troughs pass through. Howard took a photo of us in our oilies
yesterday afternoon (those things that the skipper told everyone they wouldnt
need btw!). We had just had a rousing chorus of 'Singing in the Rain' while
getting totally soaked! Just like sailing in the UK really except the rain
is very warm!
We were all really suffering in the humidity
yesterday which was awful. Ula became very hot and sticky down below as we had
to have the hatches closed during a four hours of rain. Having the oven running
for very long to cook dinner was an absolute no-no so we had a long life curry
and some fruit salad huddled under the sprayhood. Highlight on the food front
was some stollen cake donated by Andrew to celebrate St Nikolaus day in
Germany.We have now dried out, the sun is blisteringly hot and at time of
blogging we are doing 6-7 knots as the wind starts to go a little more Easterly.
My ipod appears to have staged a miraculous recovery from sitting in
two inches of water in my pocket the other night.Andrew's GTI is also back on
track. He says Nicola will not believe he is now a mere 99cm!
Awards for this blog:
Captain Grumpy Award- as noted above to John,
following almost 48 hours of disrupted sleep, unpredictable weather and seeing
to running repairs
Speedy Award - Andy C for steering for maximum
speed at all times
Submerged Award - Adrian on the helm yesterday
afternoon in the rain
Lycra Award - Andrew who has donned a white and
lime coloured poloneck Lycra top this morning and looks ready to enter the
Tour de France rather than go sailing
Three S's Award - Howard. No-not what
you were thinking!!! -Ula's sun, stars and squalls
guru
Our log tells us we should have just under 1000
miles to go by late afternoon!
Signing off for now,
Jackie
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