Tuesday, October 13, 2009

Another blast

I should not have complained that we were having a boring sail downwind
! When we passed Niue at 3 in the morning, I though that the fact that
the wind was still around 20/25 knots was due to the proximity of the
island and maybe some venturi effect. Surely, once the island behind us,
it was going to drop as the grib files predicted.
Well, around 9 a.m. , we got some windy rain showers and behind it, the
wind steadied itself at around 35 knots and has not weakened since. At
first, no problem. We dropped the main and reduced the genoa, and
continued sailing downwind at around 6 knots quite comfortably. But of
course, the longer the wind stays that way, the more the seas will build
up, and are now getting into the 15 feet range and more. This of course
means a liltle more being tossed around.
This has confused Claude who had prepared a delicious salad of gambas,
with rice, green pepper, onion and various spices. We enjoyed it a lot
but we felt that there were not a lot of gambas in it. In fact, busy
steadying pots and pan while we were being tossed around, he forgot to
put the gambas in ! Great opportunity to prepare nice snacks for
cocktail hour !
For the day, we have covered 142 miles over the ground and have closed
in on Neiafu by 138, with 196 to go.
I had overlooked the fact that Neiafu is on the west side of the date
line, so we are going to loose one day. Instead of getting there on
the 15th morning, it's going to be 16th.

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