Race 6 - Day 22
Skipper Report
13 February
Hello followers of the mighty Zhuhai.
Well, another slow day out here, but we are moving, and moving sort of in the correct direction.
I've stopped beating myself up about being a bit soft a couple of nights ago and not putting up the Code 3, which has had the knock on effect of us dropping way back from Seattle and Dare To Lead.
It's rather nice sailing, flat seas, beautiful blue skies, we had dolphins this morning, the dolphins came in handy. This morning one of our primary winches that we use to trim the Yankee or Spinnakers was making some sad noises, so we transferred the sheet off the winch so we could have a look at it.
Found the problem, fixed the problem, then put the winch back together, by now James AQP extraordinaire was on deck to help with putting it all back together, and yes of course we couldn't get it quite right, lucky the dolphins appeared so we used the diversion tactic, of wow dolphins, whilst the on watch crew were watching the dolphins, Skipper and AQP quickly rebuilt the winch as it should have been the first time.
The next visitor we had was a fisherman, he was on his own, in a small sort of dory or canoe with outriggers and an out board engine. Staying with us for a while much smiling and waving, he offered us some fish, we declined, we can't accept outside assistance when racing and that fish might have just supplied the extra brain power needed to find the wind. As he was following along side of us we needed to gybe, I sort of pointed that we were going to turn straight into him, I wasn't sure if he had reverse or not, we gybed, we didn't hit him, and I think he was very impressed with the perfectly executed light wind gybe.
Since then we have seen a bit of rubbish in the water, always happens when you’re close to shore. The game is trying to guess what each thing is, we are not having too much luck at the moment and of course if we can we will pick up the rubbish.
Hopefully this might be my last blog, James is back with you tomorrow, thanks for reading and supporting the romance boat
Love youse all
Wendo