Sailing with the Treleavens

They promise, down wind sailing for this race to the Caribbean and that's exactly what we get. The start is a fresh northerly as two start lines get the gun for a south course down the east side of Gran Canaria Island. First off is the racing division of 35 yachts and then our start line 20 minutes later with 200 in the cruising division. Gennaker up we soon leave the fleet in our wake as most yachts take a conservative start with very few spinnakers going up.

Sailing at 10+ knots and reaching speeds of 18 with the help of rain squalls and the big waves we are flying and all I have to do is hold on. There are two routes one could take; a direct line to St Lucia or a more southerly route towards the Cape Verde Islands, turn left "when the butter melts" and run with the trade winds. We have taken the second option but cut the corner slightly as our weather man predicts there is enough wind to cut through the wind shadow of the Canary Islands. This wind shadow can extend out for over 150nms.

Along with the other Australian yachts we are sharing the services of Australian weather man Bruce Buckley. We email our position daily to him and he responds with the most favourable course to follow.

By the evening we don't have a yacht in sight and settle down to running with a 4 metre swell. The islands cast a shadow over the southern point and we have some light winds overnight. With gennaker up for 24 hours we cover 193 nautical miles and suddenly it's not a rally but a race, with all the boys reveling in these conditions.

The first schedule for yacht positions at midday is emailed and we are pleased to learn from the list received later in the day that we are in a very favourable southerly position relative to other yachts of interest to us.

Day 2 is still a little cold with the odd squall going through. They say the first 24 hours are the hardest and most of us are tired and take advantage of our off watch time to sleep. Sighting two other race yachts during the day turn out to be 90+ footers. Gennaker still flying until night falls when the tack ring rips off and away she flies. The next hour is spent sewing webbing to sail and the odd finger. Not a very easy job but up she went again and fingers crossed it will last the distance.

Day 3 breakfast, ripped gennaker repair and catching a fish fills in the morning, as we move south west at 7 knots in flat calm seas and a beautiful blue sky. Sashimi for lunch having come prepared with wasabi, soy sauce and home made pickled ginger.

Everyone on board is well and looking forward to it getting warmer every day. Plotting their own charts, reality is hitting in as to how long we are going to be out here.

It is fantastic to have iridium satellite telephone on board and email access to weather and all yacht positions. We are also able to request our own forecast on grib files and download onto a chart with arrows fro wind strength and direction.

We have set up our tracker to report our position every 6 hours on our website so if you are interested visit www.treleaven.com.au and connect to the mailasail link.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 27th, 2007 at 6:23 pm and is filed under 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.