It’s taken a while but we are slowly settling into a routine. Our 7th crew member ARC mascot Sailor Ted (well done to Summer for winning the painting competition and the chance to sail him to St Lucia) seems to be enjoying himself and his been tucking into his honey to keep his strength up for the sail changes :-)
All is well onboard Rush and she’s been behaving herself. The only little thing was some chafe on the spinnaker tack line which has been fixed by Alan splicing the other end with a dyneema covered eye splice, shimmying out on the bow sprit, lashing the tack down whilst we then end to ended the rope. Fingers crossed that’s the last we see of that, we are keeping a close eye.
After a very light start in Gran Canaria we sniggled our way South of the island painfully slowly but didn’t use the engine and got into some solid breeze as it got dark and started making our way in the right direction. So far it’s been mainly 13-17kn of breeze, we have seen small sustained periods from 18-22kn a couple of times and this afternoon a light patch below 10kn. We’ve been mainly 1 or 2 reefs and spinnaker, the larger one up to 20kn true wind speed and then the smaller ‘Code 5’ beyond that. We have been sailing 60-70% of the boats theoretical performance (polars) and that seems comfortable enough, it can quite easily become hectic otherwise. Currently 1 reef and larger spinnaker in 13-15kn of wind from the East. We expect to see a build in the morning and some good breeze over the coming days, suspect we will see the small spinnaker then, maybe even our Solent (Small Genoa). Our weak point is a dead following sea with Rush’s big fat bottom getting picked up by the waves so we try to avoid that by sailing at a bit of an angle and keeping a little bit of speed on bit not too much, it’s a long way and a fine balance.
Anyway enough of the technical mumbo jumbo and onto the more important things. We haven’t tried catching a fish yet! The gear is ready to go but until the crew has got into the swing of things a bit more we won’t fish. It involves stopping the boat as 750m of line screams out at a rate of knots. That means socking the spinnaker and changing course to slow the boat to almost a stop and then winding in the fish and retrieving it, right now that seems a step too far as we get used to life offshore and figure out a solid way to do it.
Watches are set up 3hrs during the day and 2hrs at night with 3 watch leaders and 3 watch keepers. Ian and Summer, Alan and Hannah, Nia and Louis. We are taking turns for the different watches to cook and clean. As you can imagine it can be lonely for Nia and I at night, our respective watch keeping buddies don’t last a full watch just yet!
Will try keep the updates coming most days. Hopefully managed to upload the pictures as well.
Good night from all onboard the good ship Rush :-)
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