Hi All, 1300 Tuesday....A pretty brutal first night. 35 knots of wind from the NW and a 4 to 5 metre seas crashing down the boat, my “shed” canopy was working well (and now I am SOOOO glad I have it!) and sitting on the steps of the companionway behind the shed is best place to make sat phone calls. The waves are from the WSW and with wind in the NW it’s a head sea that has only one way to go, straight over the deck.
Very tired not having had much sleep overnight. I locked myself down below most of the night as there wasn’t much point in being on deck, 3 reefs and the number 4 all night and the hatch shut with the wash board in. Mike Golding told me there would be times like this in the race, by why oh why on the FIRST night out!
I was low and slow for a while this morning, maybe because my boat is very light and doesn't go upwind that well, and maybe I had the set up wrong. Not sure but now back on a heading of 245 degrees so back on track. Planning on tacking in the next few hours as I should get headed and I want to lead the fleet towards the north so that I can use the ligtening and lifted breeze tomorrow best. Wind is forecast to lighten a bit but it will be 24 hours before it calms down much and that will be only brief before we get another pasting on the other tack.
Only one “new” problem to report which is that the port side halyard winch has given up the ghost, shame as we had them serviced last winter but it seems like a catastrophic internal failure rather than just pawls going wrong. I can use it as a fairlead to lead ropes to the other winches but its days as a winch are over. It has the main halyard and first reef line on it, so quite heavily used.
The other issue is WETNESS! This boat is WET WET WET....! Already soaking down below. That isn’t really new news, we knew the main issue with being on the lowest freeboard boat in the fleet was going to be the amount of water down below. There isn’t a lot that we could have done about that and its going to be a long and wet sail to Newport from here…………
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