45’50’5S 052’22.5W course 230′ speed 4,0
Last night we were enjoying a beautiful breeze, down wind run, increasing winds, so no topsail and ready to change jib or even reef down. And even until 03:00 at night we were able to keep our big jib up and do 8 knots towards to goal. But then a dark black cloud appeared on our starboard side, our windward side, and we started to wonder if this would be the shower where it would start gusting, like the weather report had said. I send down Josu to go get Tim, who was making fresh coffee and tea, and ask him to wake up Russell and Karsten, to get the jib down and a smaller one up again… And a good thing we did! We took down the jib and the first increase really started.. and by the time the nr 2 jib was up and the new watch was on deck, we where looking at the cloud just next to us and the wind was increasing. So we reeved down the mainsail and mizzen and by the time we were done, we were running away from the wind with 9 knots towards our goal, or even east of it, to keep going down wind!
That did not last very long. By the end of the morning watch Russell was unreeving and then at noon we had to start the engine to keep going and stop flogging.
And then during the evening watch handover we set the topsail and started sailing again, and so we are still under full sail now, going a little too slow, but also too fast to start the engine.. hmmm
The picture of the day is Andy being silly just before the picture of the day election… So what normally happens during the election is we gather on the aft and there are 2 or more pictures competing. We all have a look at the picture, we then say ok we have seen, we have made a choice, three, two, one and then we point at the person who took the best picture according to us. But today, we were struggling for contestants. Karen took one or two pictures and just choose one so we had something to compete with and then Bob decided, I will just take my picture right now, Andy was there and as Bob took the picture he made a face… And at first Karen won, with a watch picture, rain, two persons on the aft and sails still reeved. But then Tim and Josu came up, a little later then the rest, so they had not chosen yet.. and they made the difference from 5-4 for Karen, to 6-5 for Bob! And so Andy with a silly face it is 🙂
all is well on board, jet
