Sailing with the Treleavens

Time to destination is getting longer as very little wind is around,after 9 days of down hill sailing. Having adapted to balancing to the yachts motion, we now find ourselves almost becalmed with flat seas, stuck between two weather systems. Still no sign of another racing yacht but as 230 boats come together it will be very interesting.

Day 8. Today we are holding onto a 16 knot SE as we slice through the 3 metre seas, heading 271. A 30 degree air temperature for most of the day and rain predicted, but very pleasant sailing and muggy in the saloon. Even the seawater temperature is 23 degrees and would love a swim but that's impossible. No stopping the boys now!

Time change at St Lucia is going to be 4 hours so we have decided to change our clock every 4 days by 1 hour. Reporting in time to race Headquarters still remains at UTC. (The old Greenwich Mean Time).

A may day has been dispatched by a non ARC participant but a race yacht has gone to their aid. Finding them in their life raft and yacht still afloat, they now have them on board for the rest of the race. Reasons for abandoning yacht were the chain plates were loose and a threat of the rig coming down. A bit odd as the unwritten rule of seamanship is to always step up to a liferaft, only when your yacht is sinking. Even stranger when 2 days later the same yacht was sighted still sailing with mast still standing.

Huge laughter comes from the naughty boy's corner as the tea ladies continue to know their place in the galley. Lamb chops on the BBQ and holding onto a glass of rose or a welcome beer. All sounds very normal until you look at the chart and see we are on a floating island in this enormous ocean.

Catching another huge Dorado, it is kissed and thrown back; we are very fussy and would like a mackerel.

Most of the race we are hand steering but tonight it is so dark anddifficult to make out a horizon we revert to the Raymarine automatic pilot. After only 4 hours of use it gave up the ghost and we discovered the next day that it had blown a seal in the hydraulic. Very disappointing.

Day 9. Light winds and a frustrating yachtsman's day. An extra skill is required today and that's to motor or not. In the race rules youcan motor and take a penalty. It could work for you or against you so we are holding out in the hope that wind is not far away.

The light conditions give us the opportunity to repair the wind gear at the top of the mast. Andrew goes aloft to retrieve and Kevin miraculously gets it all back together and operational.

Tried out our repaired gennaker today and it lasted 15 minutes. We will now make it look like a sack; by just binding what remains of the top with rope to create a loop to attach to the halyard, not pretty but it's better than nothing.

Day 10. Last night a squall came through and knocked us down in the dark, we didn't see it coming. The spinnaker didn't disintegrate but the prodder (bow sprit) which we thought was indestructible bent and broke like a twig. All hands on deck and we recovered, tidied the inside and then the off watch went back to sleep. The edge of an eastern wave (a strong wind system off Africa) came through, one minute it was 12 knots and then in the space of a few minutes we were on our side in 35 knots. Complete calm followed with heavy rain, very frustrating, especially when it came in on the nose and we were sailing hard on the breeze.

I have been asked how the duties are shared sailing the yacht. We run 2 watches with 3 crew on each and Kevin floating between.  During the day they are 4 hours each and at night they are 3 hours. It is designed so they rotate and the dog watch from 0400 to 0700 in the morning and only experienced every 2nd day. All timed of course so that all meals are served between watches.

An abandoned 12 metre open boat is reported 100 miles to the north of us. With no vision at night this is a scary thought. No wind, a sun fish slidespast the stern, a phaeton Atlantic sea bird flies over head and that's our nature study for the day as we wait for wind.

Roxanne a racing 55 foot X Yacht is the first yacht in a week to pass us and makes our mid range size boat look very good. Flying our shortened orangesacknaker (new word), so far so good.

Every day we have managed to hold our position in the top 20 of thefleet but slowly the bigger yachts behind us are tracking us down.

The trades are just staring to return and with just over 1000nms to the finish we are told to expect 20 knot winds of down hill sailing.

We find it difficult posting pics by Iridium so will send a pictorial of the race as soon as we arrive in St Lucia.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 4:38 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.