Theodora - 3/12

The last 24 hours have been the slowest of the trip so far, we covered 145.4 nms well below our previous run rate and solely because of poor winds. There was a period overnight when 5 knots looked like a good boat speed. We were hoping for these slow period to extend into daylight because that would have enabled us to go fishing, but luckily for Bill the wind lifted the boat speed to more than six knots shortly after dawn. Close.

On the subject of Bill, we have seen a subtle greying of his hair as the trip progresses, he assures is that this is a natural process his hair goes through when he near the sea for extended periods. Some might question this account of things.

We completed- some extended boat checks this morning. These included emptying out a large part of the contents of the sail locker to ensure the repair we put in place to make it fully watertight was working, it is. We also removed the fenders from the chain locker to check that the new floor drainage arrangements were working, they were. And finally we checked the Twizzle rig for chaff. We found some signs of chaff on the starboard Genoa sheet. This was moved slightly and hopefully that will solve the problem, we will check in another 48 hours. Whilst the Twizzle was furled away we also added some Vaseline to the male ends of the block to try and remove an annoying squeak.

This rig continues to perform really well, some of the things we have learnt about it are;
- It works well with more than 15 knots of wind, below that the wave motion of the sea causes the sails to de-power regular which in turn causes the sails to flap about. Rather counterintuitively the best solution we have found is too furl the rig slightly so that we reduce the amount of sail flailing around.
- Above 20 knots it pays to reef early, this appears to have little effect on speed but importantly lifts the centre of effort on the sail and therefore reduces the tendency of the bow to dive into waves.
- The higher the wind speed allows for us to set a course further away from dead downwind, by as much as fifteen degrees.

Time. We have been wrestling with the issue of time. This is not a theory of life debate but a practical one, the basic problem being this. We left Las Palmas using UK (UTC) time as “Boat” time. However when ŵe arrive in St Lucia we will need our clocks to be on Caribbean time which is four hours behind. We could leave lour clocks on UTC (Univesral Time ?, which is the current UK time) and just changed the time when we eventually arrive in St Lucia. There are two problems with this approach. Firstly it could lead to jet lag, which we would prefer to avoid. The second problem with this is that it upsets the rhythm of the day because as we sail west everyday the natural noon, when the sun hits its zenith, shits backwards by approximately twelve minutes. After a week that’s a change of almost an hour and a half. Not a problem really in the middle of the day but it does make a mess of supper timings. We have solved the problem, because out here we are not subject to the strictures of the UK Ministry of Time we can do what we like. We have therefore created our own time zone, like UTC or GMT and called it TT (Theodora Time). TT is officially two hours behind UTC. Genius.

As I prepare to send this our boat speed has picked up to a healthy 7.5 knots and we only have 1,468 nautical miles to go.....