Crew Blog

Upwind all the way

06 February 2008

In race 5 we did lots of downwind sailing and spent much of our time
hoisting, dropping and packing our spinnakers. Race 6 looks like it will be upwind all the way, so the spinnakers so far remain untouched. There hasn’t been a great deal of variation in the wind strength, so we have gone for a couple of days without a sail change. That all changed today - C watch came on duty to find A watch dripping both with sweat and seawater from swapping the Yankee 2 to the Yankee 1. An hour or so later the wind increased and up went the Yankee 2 and down came the Yankee 1 (it’s a lot easier said than done, and poor Ian and Jan manfully took the brunt of the heavy work, paying for being the only men in a predominantly female watch). Another hour later the wind died completely and we lost steerage, so up went the Yankee 1 again. By this time we were all soaked from the seawater coming over the bow, and to add insult to injury, it started to rain. However, all’s well that ends well, by the end of the watch we’d found the wind again and the sun had come out, so we were able to dry off before enjoying a well-deserved rest.

The wildlife sightings have begun to increase. Flying fish are fairly abundant, and Ian had a shock on the dawn watch when, as the sun came up, he discovered he’d been standing on one whilst he’d been helming. A group of red-footed boobies kept us entertained as they fished and squabbled amongst themselves, but the way they decorated the deck, sails and helmswoman was less welcome (consistently steering 38 apparent is difficult enough at the best of times, without worrying about attack from the air). And today, in between the sail changes, we were surrounded by a pod of dolphins.

Claire