Archives by: JML Rotary Scout

Day 19 - Thursday 23 January. By Grant Chapman. Frustratingly low winds again and only managed 120 miles for the day – we needed 150 miles each day and every day we dropped miles we would battle to make them up again. There was much cursing of both Poseidon and Neptune, making sure that both the Greek and Roman mythological Gods understood our sentiments. Our daily position report put us bunched together in our class so all of us had taken much the same ... Read more

Day 18 - Wednesday 22 January. By Grant Chapman. We started to enjoy good winds mid-morning and were averaging a reasonable 6 knots with the purple spinnaker that we had only just put up a couple of hours earlier after the wind backed to a direction off our stern, allowing us to go on a run. After a good few hours of some decent sailing for a change we seemed to be out of the doldrums and making good progress to Rio. We ... Read more

Day 17 - Tuesday 21 January. By Grant Chapman. After a morning spent in iffy winds of no more than 8knots the afternoon proved more promising with winds gusting up to 15 knots during sporadic squalls. With each squall we also received a brief drenching as the heavens emptied bucketfuls of rain onto us. Judging when to start bearing off and manning the spinnaker sheet to depower the big purple bag became more of an art than a science with good timing providing ... Read more

Day 16 - Monday Evening 20 January. By Grant Chapman. It was Lorraine and Grant’s turn to be on watch for the graveyard shift and they resolved that they would try and identify some of the stars that were making their steady progression across the night sky, considering that Grant was busy learning his celestial navigation during the voyage. With only the occasional slurping sound of the water under the hull to disturb the peace and all the lights on board switched over ... Read more

Day 15 - Sunday 19 January. By Grant Chapman. Some time mid-morning we noticed that the big purple spinnaker was torn and needed to be taken down and repaired. The damage was probably inflicted during the broach. While we effected repairs we hoisted the white spinnaker instead which as well as being heavier had narrower shoulders than the purple one so delivered less power. Crossing the 130 meridian meant we were now also over the half-way mark of the Atlantic (not the whole race ... Read more

Day 16 - Monday 20 January. By Grant Chapman. We spent a good part of the morning moving along at a decent clip of 7-8 knots in winds gusting up to 18 knots, the helmsman’s partner clutching the spinnaker sheet and releasing the tension intermittently with each gust to depower the big bag while the helmsman bore off to put the wind directly behind us and avoid a broach. Things seemed to be going swimmingly as we were eating up the miles. And ... Read more

Day 14 - Saturday 18 Janaury. By Grant Chapman. We had been at sea for two weeks now and were relieved to be heading more directly for Rio, erring on the side of caution a bit by sailing on a slightly higher bearing as we wanted to avoid the centre of a local high pressure that looked like it was ridging up into our path on the coming Tuesday. However lots can change with the weather in 4 days so we would keep ... Read more

Day 13 - Friday 17 January. By Grant Chapman. Daybreak greeted us with red skies and sure enough we had overcast skies and noticed various thunderstorms developing off our starboard beam and astern of us but managed to sail clear of them. Clouds became our friend as we discovered that there were always reasonable winds in the presence of clouds and the doldrums were associated with clear skies overhead. As the wind started to back more and more in an easterly direction we realised ... Read more

Day 12 - Thursday 16 January. By Grant Chapman. At the end of his early morning shift at 2:00am Zulu, Marcus heard one of the rods that we had inadvertently left trolling all night suddenly spring to life and he enthusiastically reeled in his catch, swinging it over the stern and into the cockpit for Chris at the helm to inspect, declaring @#*! man, I’ve caught a snake! A very long wriggling object about 3 foot long with large gnashers dangled from the ... Read more

Day 11 - Wednesday 15 January. By Grant Chapman. We sailed into doldrums weather at about 11:00am and sat in pretty much windless conditions for the rest of the day. This was very odd as although we knew the wind would drop the GRIB files indicated at least 5 knots of wind and the barometric pressure was still at 1017hPa, indicating we weren’t at the centre of the high. Fortunately we were in a reasonably strong current by now that was pushing us ... Read more