Day 3 or 4 I forget which, it depends on whether one counts the few hours of 7th

A rolly night last night, I’d decided to go for just a poled out genoa for the overnight option and set this up just before sundowners, it’s surprisingly involved (people may want to skip this next bit)  going from a goosewinged set up to just a poled out genoa because I couldn’t get the main down, downwind and to go vaguely upwind meant  gybing the genoa which meant bringing the spinnaker pole down, gybing the genoa, then altering course, dousing the main, re aligning the course, bringing the pole across to the other side, bringing the genoa back in to put it on the pole and then out again on the pole.

However, it was good to have done as we were no slower with the set up although the rolling is a bit worse. There was a Catamaran on the horizon last night I saw his sail and AIS but he went past fairly quickly, he was 20m and probably on his best point of sail - broad reach. We had a good night rolling a bit, but mostly making in excess of 7.5 knots, I had to run the engine twice for batteries. This morning was going well until I tried to start this when a few drops of rain sent me below, during which time the wind veered 30 degrees and the genoa gybed bringing us from 8 knots to 3, however the beauty of this rig is one can alter course a fair bit without doing much so I’m now heading with a little more North in the course than I had been with a slightly reduced genoa, probably unnecessarily but I was thinking of Alastair, and still doing 7 knots, it looks like the rain squall may not run into much but I’ll give it a few more minutes before unrolling the full sail….

Just been up on deck, it’s all a bit variable still, I’ll leave it for now, I had to come back to starboard 10 degrees, the wind is due to back later so if I’m  lucky I’ll avoid having to gybe the pole again. I had hoped to get another coat of varnish on the spots on the wheel which I did yesterday - the sun is burning the varnish off like billly o! Varnishing is not my forte. On Blue Leopard Jafri, my brilliant Malay deckhand was a wizard at it and wouldn’t let me near it. I’m not patient enough. It’s a bit like weeding - you can do a good job to be proud of and weeks later it needs doing again, well in the  tropics anyway. There are alternatives, I’ve tried them all but don’t think any are better or less work. The oil varnish mixture is easier to put on but seems to need 3 times as many coats,, the two pack lasts longer but is awful to spot fix later, so one has to take it all off and start again. 

I’ve just unrolled the full genoa again, the wind is down a little and we weren’t making best speed.

I had a good stir fry with chicken last night and spoiled myself with a big white coffee this morning, a full ‘Salmo’ mug, about a pint and a half made with a coffee machine I’d picked up from the bins in the Canaries, the type where you put the water in the bottom, the coffee in the middle and  an empty jug on top and then put it on the stove whereby, after a bit,  the water magically ends up as coffee in the top bit. It’s a bit of a kerfuffle but the cafetiere is as well, so for one or two , it’s a good option. I heated up some milk to  go with it so had  a milky  coffee. I quite like the cafe con leche in Spain but not the cafe con leche, con leche which I don’t know if it’s a canarian thing or across spain but is essentially milky coffee with condensed milk in it as a layer. I think one can have it with alcohol as a sort of Postre. It’s fine but I prefer the ingredients separately.

Numbers for today will be about 240 to go and 156 run, it should have been many more were it not for me stuffing up the genoa rolling up in the morning.

I’ve been listening to my ancient mp3 player, well to me it’s relatively new being from Singapore in 2003, which is now working well (mostly) so Johnny Cash was accompanying me yesterday evening with Willie Nelson backing him up.

The charge is running out so I t may be my last day with it for now, Graham has kindly bought me a charge lead for it which should work from a USB socket.

Slainte

Jock and Yemaya.