Sailing with the Treleavens

Ian calls this 'Champagne Sailing' but I wouldn't go that far! With beautiful down hill sailing during the day, we have had our moments with unpredictable squalls going through in the evenings. We can see from ARC reports that we are doing quite well but its still early days and a no wind area is ahead of us. Our first position report received puts us in 32nd position boat for boat in the whole fleet of 240 yachts including racing and maxi division.
 
Day 4. Settling into a routine and hating getting up in the night for my watch, Michelle and I are very grateful for all the pre cooked meals we prepared before we left. With 18 knots of wind and the spinnaker still flying the boys have their hands full and loving it. With all this going on we still have time to get out the fishing line and it's not long before we pull in the big one. A 12 kilo beautiful yellow Dorado, one hour later it is on the BBQ and enough fish to fill the freezer. No more fishing for us as we will only take from the sea what we can eat.
In the evening a 25 knot squall pulls the head out of our brand new orange gennaker and once again a big repair job. Up goes our trustee old yellow 'Cadiz' spinnaker (made in NZ) and carries us through the night.
 
Day 5. Hours are taken to reconstruct the gennaker and flying again by mid day, only to have it pull the head out again that evening. The wind gear was damaged by the gennaker blow out and we now have no wind direction instrument. The yachts taking the northerly rhum line route are leading but our weather man assures us the middle route is the best long term for better trade winds.
 
Day 6.  Sunrise, clear blue day, lots of dolphins and just us in this big blue ocean.  Not ones to be beaten another attempt to repair the gennaker is under way by David & Michelle, and with lots of sail ties sewn in for extra support, it is bagged and now kept as a last resort. Trade winds are consistent at 16 knots and averaging 9.5 knots all day we hope to achieve our 200 miles in 24 hours.
 
This morning we are in 13th place, boat for boat, out of the whole fleet, so it's no wonder we haven't seen another yacht for 2 days. We are 1st in our division. Bruce Buckley our weather man has certainly positioned us to make the best of the fickle trade winds.
 
Before we left we were warned to report and stay clear of refugees. An ARC participant got too close to a boat load and two of them swam to the yacht. They secured their visitors and had to stand by until the police helicopter arrived. And on a Volvo 60 a crewman is badly burned after a broach and taken off by a ship, a reminder to be very careful. Apart from that we hope everyone is having a great ride.  
 
Day 7. Reaching the 1000 nm mark we have only 1800 to go. With very dark nights, till the half moon comes up, we ran wing and wing with our headsail poled out, getting a better heading and no stress night for a change. It is very important to preserve our spinnakers.
Good winds all day reaching 22 knots, 3 metre seas and lots of flying fish. 
 
Ian is very impressed with the performance of our yacht. She runs beautifully and life down below is very comfortable, not feeling the speeds we are achieving on deck.
 
Andrew talks of ice cream and passion fruit, Michelle has adapted her yoga positions to suit the cabin and I keep my eye on the destination date, which is shown on the computer screen calculating our current speed.  I have to say it has been a wonderful sail, considering the rolling seas we are on an even keel. From here on we are on a slide to St Lucia. 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 2nd, 2007 at 4:08 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.