Midday Sunday
Trade winds are great when they are behind you! We have covered over 200NM
in each of the last two 24 hr periods with the simplest of rigs and in great
comfort.
We have been running with a goose-winged genoa on a fixed spinnaker pole and
a similar fixed main boom by way of a preventer and the staysail sheeted in
pretty hard to leeward. The roller furling on Ruth II allows us to quickly
and easily reduce sail as conditions dictate without leaving the cockpit.
Our course has us diverging slowly from the main shipping route from the
Cape up towards Dakar on the western edge of Africa, where presumably the
ships continue north toward the ports of Europe. Most vessels are travelling
not much faster than us, their 12 to 14 kts perhaps reflecting their
increased fuel costs in recent years. By now they all seem to be at least
80NM east of us as we continue our course towards remote St. Helena.
Lots of crew activity which mainly centred around sailing and food - one is
making progress on knitting armlets for anticipated colder night later in
the voyage while others are reading or studying cookbooks in an effort to
surpass previous efforts at dinner. Your author had a first attempt at
breadmaking and now has a very good recipe for cake!
Our skipper is continuing to develop new skills, there is a bit of dentistry
going on in the cabin at the moment, but nothing serious as the big drill is
still in its box in the forepeak.
TC
Trade winds are great when they are behind you! We have covered over 200NM
in each of the last two 24 hr periods with the simplest of rigs and in great
comfort.
We have been running with a goose-winged genoa on a fixed spinnaker pole and
a similar fixed main boom by way of a preventer and the staysail sheeted in
pretty hard to leeward. The roller furling on Ruth II allows us to quickly
and easily reduce sail as conditions dictate without leaving the cockpit.
Our course has us diverging slowly from the main shipping route from the
Cape up towards Dakar on the western edge of Africa, where presumably the
ships continue north toward the ports of Europe. Most vessels are travelling
not much faster than us, their 12 to 14 kts perhaps reflecting their
increased fuel costs in recent years. By now they all seem to be at least
80NM east of us as we continue our course towards remote St. Helena.
Lots of crew activity which mainly centred around sailing and food - one is
making progress on knitting armlets for anticipated colder night later in
the voyage while others are reading or studying cookbooks in an effort to
surpass previous efforts at dinner. Your author had a first attempt at
breadmaking and now has a very good recipe for cake!
Our skipper is continuing to develop new skills, there is a bit of dentistry
going on in the cabin at the moment, but nothing serious as the big drill is
still in its box in the forepeak.
TC
Thanks Tom - loving the updates ! L
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