Bluewaft - Bluewaft Log Day 23 - Land Ho!

Monday 12 December 201618°01’.930N 063°05’.115WAn eventful 24 hours!The last 200 nm to go so on the home straight! Winds have at last stabilised and are sitting nicely between 20 and 25kts, with the occasional squall for good measure.We are goose-winging when all of a sudden the genoa slides off its furler.The shackle has been stripped.We manage to bring in the genoa and decide to furl the gennaker. So we are now sailing with just the stay sail and reefed main.The wind builds and we’re still managing 7-8 kts, so maybe a blessing in disguise!We’re still seeing the autohelm hard to port and realise this is not right. We check the rudder position and see that while the starboard one is dead centre, the port rudder is hard over to port.We bring the autohelm to ‘standby’, centre the rudders. read more...

Bluewaft - Bluewaft Log Day 22 - Final stretch

Bluewaft Log Day 22Sunday 11 December 201618°07’.101N 059°59’.502WLess than 200nm to go!At last we’re seeing some good consistent winds –in the 15kt – 22kt range, and an established swell of 8-10ft pushing usalong.While we made good time during the day, we had a busy night withsqualls.At sun set we had a good look around and nothing on the horizon.We tweaked the radar gain to pick up rainfall (a good indicator of intensesqualls).You can imagine our surprise a couple of hours later, when withno warning from the radar, a squall hit.Fortunately it wasn’t too severe,only 25kts, and we were able to quickly furl the gennaker.But it gave usa fright and we sailed the rest of the night on the genoa.This cost ussome speed, but better safe than sorry!This morning we re-rigged the gennaker in a. read more...

Bluewaft - Bluewaft Log Day 21: Home stretch

Bluewaft Log Day 21Saturday 10 December 201618°14’.133N 057°21’.267WWe now have just over 300nm to go – so in the home stretch now.We’ve hada good 24 hours of sailing, averaging over 7kts on goose-wing with the jiband gennaker with wind speeds in the 10-16kt range.A comfortable ridewith the swell giving us a nice ‘push’ in the right direction.We clockeda top speed of 9.4kts – not bad for this sail configuration in these winds.We’ve decided to sail straight to St Maarten (270nm NNE from St Lucia).The island is French and Dutch – sort of a mini Belgium in the Caribbean.We have arranged a berth for Bluewaft there with the local Lagoon agent.Marcus and Alex have changed their flights and James and I should still beable to make our planned flights back to New Zealand and Oz.This way weshould. read more...

Bluewaft - Bluewaft Log Day 20: Fish and Squalls

Bluewaft Log Day 20Friday 9 December 201618°41’.474N 054°25’.925WOnly 500nm to go!A good day’s sailing where we’ve clocked up just under150nm.The winds have settled into a solid Easterly ranging from 10 to18kts.We’re goose-winging with the Jib and Gennaker.The sea state isstill confused with a cross swell, but the waves are only around 1-2m.Wehave been dogged by squalls from sunset to sunrise, with most of themmoving in an East to West direction. (Last time they were always North toSouth).To make matters interesting, they move just faster than Bluewaft,and because we are travelling a little south they tend to ‘creep up’ fromour port stern and cut across our bow.We’ve been using the radar to trackthem and furl the Gennaker if they get too close – but it takes constantvigilance!They. read more...

Bluewaft - Log Day 19 - Sailing off into the sunset

Bluewaft Log Day 19Thursday 8 December 201618°59’.827N 051°55’.886WAnother day of sailing in light winds.After starting on a beam reachwe’ve switched to a goose-wing using the gennaker and genoa.We’reaveraging 4-5kts in 10-11 kts of wind from the East.So still makingprogress – but slower than we’d hoped.The forecast increase in winds isyet to materialise.Still, it’s a comfortable sail and we are makingprogress.The temperature has noticeably increased, with ‘no shirts’ the order of theday.The best spots are on the netting where you get the cool air comingoff the waves.Still no fish.Jame’s ‘lucky lure’ was lost and no nibbles on either ofthe other lines.We’ve plenty of food anyway, but the fresh fish is alwaysappreciated.We’re also now starting to get low on fresh vegetables.Thegreen. read more...