Rock and Roll Sunday

13’55.4S 009’26.0W course 343′ speed 5,5kn

Saturday we were thinking how nice and calm the ocean swell was and Sunday we were regretting ever having said this. We are back to the rocking and rolling we “enjoyed” in our first week away from Cape Town. A violent small waves moves among the longer swell, that rocks us side to side every now and then. With us trying to steer down wind, this makes for an uncomfortable shake every so often. The main moans, the mizzen snaps, the staysail and jib dance around and the whole ship shakes.. And so do we.

But we won’t let that get us down! We gibbed this morning just before lunch. We took down the topsails first and then got ready for the gibe. We did not set the topsails again as the skies are starting to look a little less settled and we are expecting the wind to increase to 17 knots during the night. With small crews in our watches, it feels a little nicer not to worry about them during the night when all others are asleep.
And the wind did increase somewhat, sometimes we are doing 7 knots in spells of more wind.. and then it decreases again. It may just be a sign of what’s to come

Our average is not very high yet, but what is more annoying is our angle to the wind. Like Gijs experiences in 2020, the gibbes have almost a 80 degree angle, not very nice, but we have to keep the sails full, otherwise they would be flogging all the time!

Enough about our sail challenges! Apart from some dancing of sails, we had a great Sunday. The weather was really nice. We saw some showers around us, in the distance, in the afternoon, but we were happy with shade and a warm breeze. During our Sunday beer we were all very chatty, so dinner only started at 19:15. Pumpkin curry with dahl and rice. Alice made an amazing desert – Guinness cake with icing on top! Ouch, so nice.

All is well on board, Jet

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