Winds up!, had the Kite up all day yesterday which was good for
the speed and the motion. At night the wind seems to become quite
gusty an shitfy so we are taking the kite down through the night as
we don't really want to deal with it later on. Had an interesting
time getting the bugger down this time.
We have quite a big kite on the boat (actually we have two, one
small, one big - we have been using the big one) when it's blowing
around 20-25 we take it down. Usually we would have the mainsil up
as well as the kite, but with such a big spinnaker having the main
up as well we would be seriously over powered so we have been
sailing with just the kite. It also allows us to sail it much deeper
down wind as there is no ill effect from the main. The down side to
this is we cannot collapse the spinnaker behind the main to take it
down. So when the winds up it's a real challenge in getting the
thing down. Jason almost got propelled vertically off the boat a few
times during the process! But we are slowly getting better at it.
Once we had it down we settled the boat down to sailing just with
the Jib / Genoa sheeted through the end of the boom.
Wind through the night was light so the speed fell off, but the
bloody swell / slop was right up making sleeping difficult. So hard
in fact Jason re wired the freezer through the night (current wire
was to small and we were getting a large voltage drop between the
freezer and switch panel) This involved taking up floor boards
running cables etc. All quite funny actually sitting on the floor
and sliding from one side to the other while trying to be
technical. It was no use trying to hold on so you did a bit, slid
away, slid
back did a bit more etc....
Passed another sailing boat through the night!!, we slowly came up
on them passing them about 1nm off to our port side, they were
heading the same way (west). We even had to change course to not hit
them!! It's amazing that in the ocean two small boats could bump
into each other!
Day 5 Morning started with the morning radio net, then breakfast
then the decision to leave the sails as they are. The forecast says
it will get windy over the next few days and the boat feels well
balanced so it can all stay where it is. Still no fish though, will
keep on trying. Friends on another boat "Reality" caught two
yesterday!! so we are feeling the pressure, we are blaming the
Aquagen as our lack of success - must be scaring the fish away! -
What else could it be!
16:00. Well the wind is defiantly up and we are moving along quite
quickly, but the cross swell makes us lurch around and is really
starting to piss us off. Hoping things calm a little for tonight -
otherwise Day 6 will be a tired and lazy day....
J&J
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