Time Bandit - Time Bandit - Highs and Lows

38 10N
38 58W
21:00
27th May

The highs, the crests that is, have been about 4 metres higher than the lows, the troughs.

It's been a pretty rough day, this, our penultimate day at sea. The wind built steadily all day yesterday and we went from motoring in a slop to running reefed in the dark in just a few hours.

Over night, we saw only the second yacht as a red masthead quite close to us. As we thought this could be another single hander, snug asleep in their bunk we let out a reef and scooted off into the night leaving him in our wake with his light receding to a pinprick then nothing.

Dawn came, much like Anne's sister visiting from a sunless, winter Aberdeen.... grey and cold. The winds had risen to 256 knots and built all day as the sun came out to give a sleigh ride in a steady 30 knots, force 7 in Billy Beaufort speak. Under 2 slab reefs and half a genoa the beige battleship crashed on eastwards hitting 8+ knots on every second wave. Our maximum on the instruments shows 12.4! (Maybe we should have had a bit less sail up but it was a great ride).

The wind is straight to Horta and we're having to go a good 10+ degrees off track to avoid the crash gybe. The wind will hopefully veer north a shade so we can gybe in the morning and make our final run in to Horta, eta about 10 or 11pm. However, the wind is now dying so the high speeds are dropping and it could be an early morning arrival in the dark.... and don't you love them. Fortunately we've been before so know the layout and approach.

Sleeping in all the wind has been tough as we're rolling gunwhale to gunwhale. Good exercise for the core muscles. Not so great for serving pasta.

So, only 178 miles to go, one long, last night. Come to think of it, ocean sailing is like jazz music. You love it when it stops!


S&A

P.S. Duogen drive shaft coupling sheared an hour ago. Great concept held together with silly bits of plastic. Fortunately, we're almost there.