Scarlet Oyster - Day 4 Scarlet ARC 2015, Rhumb line to the Rum!

Finally found time to get some words down! Been a mixture of reasons for
this poor display of blogging, one of course is that Simon is not onboard
this race we miss him, but I am pleased to report he has plans to sail with
us again soon! Another reason is it has been slightly busy settling into
routine at sea, I have found time to sleep a lot tho! The main reason is I
mislaid the piece of paper with the email address to send this too so it
ends up on the site as a Scarlet blog, having found it I can confirm it is
exactly the same address as last year (and probably the 3 before that too!).

Anyways all is well on the good ship Scarlet, the start seems a month ago
already, but as I recall we started 2 seconds off the line, several lengths
clear ahead! Start as you mean to go on I suppose! We had an exciting sail
under A7 spinnaker down to the wind acceleration SW of Gran Canaria zone,
surfing along at 17knots at times! Once in the acceleration zone we got the
spinnaker down before anything terrible happened to it (I'm learning it
seams!) Several gybes under poled out no.3 kept us busy but significantly
inshore of the fleet so as the wind bent around the island we sailed less
distance, after flirting with the wind shadow we were off on our merry way,
still poled out as the wind was gusting to 30kn at times, our plan to get a
little South paid of as the effect of the big wind shadow of Tenerife barely
slowed us.

Since then it has been a bit repetitive with kite hoists followed by drops
for clouds and 30plus squalls, one spinnaker has been sacrificed to Neptune
(environmentalists will be pleased to hear we fished it all out the ocean,
regular crew will be pleased to hear it was one that nobody liked!), our
remaining 4 kites are being preserved as much as possible till the wind and
sea stabilises!

The 4 hr position updates ensures we use plenty of Sat credit, but not to
worry these things are not as expensive as they used to be to run! This
really brings the race to life for us, and I know many following at home!
Also enables us to manage our routing taking into account the whole of our
class, there is quite a spread of the 18 boats so this is getting harder to
cover every move!

We were very saddened to hear that little 'Duffy' was dismasted this
morning, relieved to hear all are ok, I know only too well what that must
feel like, 'gutted' does not come close.... 'Duffy' took part and completed
this years challenging 'Rolex Middle Seas Race', they are clearly a tough
crew, notably they received an award on that event for standing by another
competitor in difficulties in challenging weather, they should have been
entitled to better luck. I wish them a safe passage under motor back to the
Cannaries, we are still tracking their progress that is now updated hourly
on yellow brick, 'Marlene F' diverted to give them 180l of fuel, nice touch
guys.

All for now

I'll try and write something again soon

Night night from Scarlet Oyster!

Ross