Position @ 1200 UTC
35⁰ 24.53 N 42⁰ 52.13 W
Nautical Miles traveled in last 24 hrs:- 137
The night quitened down, still 25 gusting to 35 knots of wind so went through with only Staysail and a very reefed main, kept the Radar on all night but nothing happened to us I am pleased to say. Not so for another competetor, “Setanti”,apparently they hit something below the water line around 0300 hrs this morning and which broke their rudder and sent it up into their transom. They put out a “May Day” and contacted ARC Control and of course Falmouth who coordianted the rescue. She obviously lost all her steering and was bobbing about in the north atlantic. We were 300 miles plus away from her so we were of no use but “Gilly of London” started to go to her rescue. The up shot of it all this was that there was the freighter in the area. It went and picked up the 4 aboard but unfortunatly the boat had to be abandoned, In fact they couldn’t just leave her as a hazzard, no doubt they scuttled her. What a shame, still no one hurt, thats the main thing. No one knows what they hit below the water but I suspect it would have been a container that had fallen of some cargo ship! That is the one fear I have, especially travelling at night. You have little chance of spotting them during the day but zero chance at night.
As things were quiter this morning we took the opportunity to have a look at the broken bit on the end of the Jib pole, the good news is that nothing was broken, the up haul had a quick release shackle and it had got twisted by the out haul in the wind which caught the lever that released the jib sheet. Tieing a bowling around the end of the out haul and attaching the down haul’s quick release shackle cured the problem. We are now back poling out the jib and up to 7 knots. Our “Red Ensign” and our cockpit “hood” have both suffered over the last coupleof days, so replacements will be needed in those departments!
This mornings forecast isn’t much better, we are still being chased by the “lows” but are hoping they die out before we have to finally cut north. We have co nsidered leaving out the Azores and carrying straight on to Lagos but we can’t. Manly because this may be the last opportunity I get to go to the Azores, after all it’s not on any hoiday routes!!! and secondly we have a change in crew, Andrew leaves us and Vince joins us
We also filled the Generator tanl and the three1 gallon containers with diesel which we now use as it is easier to fill the generator from the1 gall container than the 5 gallon containers.
Home made bread, tosted was for breakfast and we have now finished the first loaf. Looks as if I will have to bake again tomorrow! Coffee and a biscut for lunch and into BBC, the film being “The Spy Who Loved Me” Half way through we had to take in the Jib and set the staysail and reef in some of the main as the wind was getting back up again. Naturally as soon as we had done that it dropped! Anywaywe wereset for the night and a little over 600 miles to run along the rhum line.
Tonight for the second time we are going to try and finish the lasagne, but we did have some of the fish soup to finish. Unfortunatly for some perculiar reason the oven wouldn’t stay alight so we finished having the fish soup at about 1830 hrs an Lasagne about 2000hrs: so for the fist time we didn’t all sit down together to enjoy a meal. Chris was in the cockpit, I was a the chart table and Andrew was fiddling with something. Anyway dinner over, we were already battened downfor the night and I did the 2100 hrs to midnight.
Apart from very high seas, wind around 28 to 34 knots and gusting around 36 knots a pleasent, but cold and verynwet night!! Oh yes I did reef in the Staysail a bit before handing over to Andrew!