28 & 29 November
Monday morning, all bright eyed and bushy tailed today after a peaceful night's trading under a starry sky. We haven't managed to catch any whales to keep the crew occupied with scrimshaw yet, so skipper creates job list as diversionary tactic. Sock and smalls washing, loo cleaning, sleeping bag ionising, that sort of stuff. We have now cut deep into trade winds territory so a gybe to the west is needed. A 30 min fumble of poles and lines. At least nothing stuck aloft this time. Skipper would love the chute up but ruefully regards his bruises and chickens out. 6.5 knots under white sails will have to do instead. Morning radio report shows our position in the fleet to be pretty good, although one 44ft boat which had managed to achieve about the best handicap in the fleet (better than the small boats and on a par with a gaff rigged coalbarge towing a parachute) was mysteriously flying along in front at 8 knots. Hmm....
Nick instructing David on the mysteries of noon sights with the Ebco Special plastic sextant. The boat looks like a Kowloon dhoby wallah's rickshaw...draped from end to end in socks and M&S shreddies. No sign of any fish whatever, apart from little flying jobbies. One boat in the fleet has caught so many dorados that their freezer is full. Freezer...who needs one?
As I write, our eminent surgeon is washing out the loo floor wearing his surgical gloves, a matelot t-shirt and a straw boater. David, by the way, was instrumental in using tendon repair techniques to sew together our spinnaker halyard yesterday. Obviously surgeons are after all more useful on boats than naval officers. Clocks back 1 hour today as we have crossed the 30 deg W line. Although it confuses us, we have to keep doing this as the wretched sun won't stay still.
The working day turns into a very bouncy and black night with huge surf topped rollers cork-screwing us along on our beam ends. The wind gets up to over 25 or so and stays there. We have a full main, and genoa, and also a large staysail out to windward. The foresails are boomed out and preventered. Every sheet and guy has anti-chafe running blocks and lines and the main is pressed hard into the lower backstays. The new running backstays seem to be working hard to keep the mast from flexing, but, in short, we are over-pressed and the rig is twanging like Vanessa Mae's fiddle. Getting a reef in the main and genoa is a 30 min muscular struggle but once done, Raparee settles into a fast ungainly and bumpy ride. Our speed during surges between 7 and 9 knots and each phosphorescent sprayed surge is loud and furious.
Early AM Tues 29, time to lick our wounds and decide strategy for the day. We are getting in 160 mile days, and are 140 miles from our halfway point, but overpressed and still not quite going in the right direction. Our autopilot is working hard, but is continuously on full load, so a change of course and rig is essential. But fast downwind sailing course changes also mean complicated rig changes and we are all a bit whacked and bruised. Maybe if we wait a bit, the sunshine will solve it all and anyway the wind might change more in our favour......?
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