Two nights ago Diane stayed on deck a bit longer after her watch. We were supposed to tack in 30 minutes and she was in for all this fun. She said it seemed all the fun had been going on out side of her watch, so 30 more minutes was worth it for the fun.
As we got ready to tack with Kirsty and Orla on the helm and mizzen, Sam and Diane on the backstay and me in front on the jib and forestaysail, little did we know of what would await is in the coming 24 hours! We tacked, it all went very smooth and Diane went to bed satisfied.
Next day it turned out, would be filled with fun! In the morning the nice breeze turned made us believe we had better swap the second jib for the big jib.. but this nice breeze turned into a strong breeze again just after lunch. We had to swap jibs and head back on course, but by that time (only 20 min later) the wind had increased some more and so both mainsail and mizzen were reefed down. Diane was helping on the mainsail, its all about fun she said! We reefed the mainsail with 3 persons while the mizzen was being reefed with 2 and Ron was on the helm, keeping us straight.
The reefing and changing of the jib had set us back south so far (changing the jib we have to do downwind.. and ofcourse downwind was down current.. we were doing 7,4 knots..) that we had to tack 3 times to get back on the latitute we were at hours before. This wind was starting to get on our nerves, doing 4,6 knots against wind and current, with an apparent angle to the wind that seemed very high, but don’t look at the GPS..
The wind kept on increasing, force 6 or 7 and we were backtracking… so enough! We decided that this little town we had been looking at all day, might be a nice shelter.
So last night we threw anchor in a bay in front of a town called Anchieta. We walked there today, a very nice and hot day, while the wind was howling out side our little cove. Again coming from the North East.
We finally found ourselves a weather report that we like, that dangles a southerly wind in front of our eyes, like a mouthwatering piece of fruit. Last night we had a nice BBQ and tomorrow morning we will start looking for this southerly wind.
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