We’ll start with today’s malfunction: ~midnight, the topping lift
for the starboard ‘yankee’ headsail pole disengaged. It turns out that the short
grabline for the shackle caught and released the pole. No damage, and the
foredeck solution was to take slack out of the topping lift line, and zip-tie
the shackle. As was stated in the pre-ARC+ seminar, the #1 unwritten job of a
shackle seems to be to free itself – LOL!
Again last night, a squall front came through out 17-degrees north
position. Taking weatherman-sailor Chris Tibbs’ advice, we rolled in the
mainsail, and reduced our dual headsail by 50% – early. The winds veered to the
NW and we ran comfortably through the 3-mile cell. Subsequent cells of up to
28-knots pushed us 10nm north of our plan, however the wind produced a fast sail
on the backside of the cells and we have reclaimed 9 of those 10nm. Our ARC+
distance to destination progress moved us up to #22 from #28 just 24-hours ago.
the expected return of light winds will again favor the lighter boats.
Speaking of reclaiming, our Garmin G2 Vision West Coast African map
indicates that we have 31nm to the edge of its ‘world.’ With pleasure, I’ll need
to replace it with my SE Caribbean G2 chip. Yes, we have a paper chart aboard of
our crossing, as we have one for Cape Verde & St Lucia. We also have a
compass & a sextant, however the electronic devices become convenient
crutches for all but the purists.
All is good, and Nick is on the aft deck fishing using the 4-flying
fish that landed on our decks last night.
Tom Hughes