UMIKO BLOG Thursday 5th December
Greetings again from SV Umiko. As I write, we have just passed the 500 DTD (Distance to Destination) mark, making slow progress towards St. Lucia. While our primary objective now is the comfort of our crewmate Barry, our course to obtain medical attention for him at St. Lucia takes us towards the finish line, so we’re still in the race, albeit sailing with a conservative sail plan – currently under main and jib. We got some encouraging news from home this morning as the YB Racing App reported us lying second place in the Racing A division, but we’re not sure how much faith to put in that report as we think that there may be a number of yachts sailing faster that us and closer to the finish.
Barry remains in good spirits given his injury and is proving to be a most unassuming patient for his crewmates looking after him round the clock. He is improving daily and we have no doubt he will be back to his old self before long – regaling all in the National Yacht Club bar with takes of his exploits.
Like Barry, Umiko herself needs some TLC from time to time, even though we are sailing under main and jib only, we are constantly checking rigging etc. and have changed the position of our preventer line to a new strong point on the deck as a caution in case in case the old strong point to which it was attached proves to be less strong that envisaged given its proximity to an area of damage to the decking resulted from our incident last night. We (and by we I mean Nico!) have also repaired a small problem with our watermaker – very important out here in the hot sun. Speaking of sun, we have had sunshine every day since day two of our race, and are careful to apply lots of suncream – particularly in light of the fact that Umiko’s lines are so sleek that she offers no protection at all on deck from the sun or the rain. Not ideal for a long passage of this type but luckily we have only had a small number of brief showers so far. Nature was very kind to the Knights’ Watch last night, sending a squall and downpour just before the watch change, with the rain stopping almost to the minute on the hour as the Crime Watch came off watch. Sorry guys!
Windspeeds have been relatively consistent in the 15 – 18 knot range but the wind direction, as always varies almost on a minute to minute basis, requiring high concentration by whomever is helming, especially at night after the moon drops below the horizon. To make matters more difficult for the helm, our instruments have decided for some inexplicable reason to stop providing us with True Wind Angle reading. At time of writing our VMG is averaging just under 8 knots, slower than we would like, but we continue trucking on for Saint Lucia as best we can.
Alan