Just then we had three fish strikes together, and wouldn’t you know it,
Paul and I both lost ours, and Johnny landed his!! But what Johnny didn’t
know was that Graham landed another fish on Johnny’s line while he was
napping!!
So I think the score board looks like JR – 2; POG – 1.5; JM – 7.5; Beltana
– 1; GK – 0.5. keep up the good work – guess what Fish for lunch
today.
We have just plotted our position, planned the route from here, measured
the distance (1,570NM) and run the numbers based on average speed and it looks
like we make landfall between 12-14th December DEPENDING ON THE WIND, so that is
not too bad.............
Bye for now Jono
and then the afternoon became slightly more eventful........in light of the
average speed required (as described above) the crew are now avidly studying the
speed readout and (after a truly magnificent meal of fresh Mahi Mahi “fish
fingers”(with a crumb ingeniously and artfully created from oats, Weetbix,
parmesan and Graham’s secret mixture of herbs and spices - more colloquially
referred to as Pepper and Salt – and a truly splendid salsa of avocado and
tomato) it was observed that we were behind the eight ball vis a vis
velocity. The breeze was less than 10 so it was decided to go for the
second hoist in anger of the Beltana II spinnaker. In mid hoist it was
observed that the second main sail batten was making its third bid for freedom
on the trip. (A detailed explanation of yesterday’s trojan efforts to
resecure the batten will follow in another blog and it was explained at length
to the batten that Beltana II does not have a batten over board (BOB......think
of Rowan Atkinson in the Elizabethan Blackadder......procedure so the batten
would be on its own with no hope of reprieve). Well what to do? Up
with the spinnaker....more speed and then worry about the main.
Spinnaker flying well, JVC at the helm and obviously a tricky drop at full speed
with the breeze behind but it happened remarkably well and the boat is now very
nicely balanced to the extent that “Aunt Hillary”, aka auto helm, is coping just
splendidly. The main will go back up when we go under “whites” for night
time running. In the mean time Beltana II is making about 7 knots on the
rhumb line for St Lucia in just about 10 knots of breeze under spinnaker
alone.........a great experience of trades winds sailing....the only real
surprise is that a fishing line didn’t go off in the middle of it all!!!!
The next big event of the trip will be the lamb roast at 38 degrees
West.........pretty much the half way mark for longitude,
POG