sexta-feira, 4 de dezembro de 2009

NOVAS MENSAGENS


PHOENICIA comemora aniversário de Yuri a bordo

3rd December 2009
010° 52.731S, 055° 32.272E
Blog 20 plus photographs: Grey skies ahead





Yesterday we celebrated Yuri's birthday and amongst other things we made an oat cake for him. The attached pictures shows him handing out a piece to another member of the crew.

Progress towards Mayotte has been fair. At times we have made dramatic progress with strong winds and speeds of around 6 knots. These have been compensated for by dull periods of light rainy winds where we have only managed to do 2-3 knots. Still we are closing the gap on Mayotte and have about 600 miles to run. An ETA of Tuesday is still looking optimistic except when we were doing 6 knots but that didn't last for many hours.

During the night we experienced a fair bit of rain, lightening and thunder storms. We also experienced a rather dramatic wind-shift that sent the boat spinning for a while amongst large waves till we could re-brace the sails.

An anxious moment because it was so sudden but it soon passed and we were back on course within a minute or two. As the other picture shows, we are constantly on the look out for grey skies with heavy rain clouds, so we can anticipate the next soaking and whether to furl the sail if needs must. To date the wind forces from the rain clouds have been manageable. In the foreground of the picture is Phoenicia's Zuli or head/PC and one of our three Viking Liferafts. Hopefully we won't be needing the latter anytime soon but we certainly got a bit of a taste for things to come on the weather front during the early hours of this morning.



Seguidores