Day 4 – Tuesday 7 January 2014.

By Grant Chapman.

We were still running with the swell in the early morning with a southerly wind pushing us along in a north westerly direction and a bit of blue sky starting to appear. Mid-morning we goose-winged the genoa out on the pole and started moving along nicely at 9 knots. Our previous thoughts of what the hell we thought we were doing embarking on this journey started to dissipate and we were back in a very buoyant mood. Lorraine had also bounced back now from her sea sickness and was running all the rigging with determined efficiency while making sure that the rest of us all performed properly. Everyone started chatting about their families for the first time which they had been clearly missing and having been in survival mode the last couple of days had only themselves to worry about.

There was a sudden crash on the fore deck as the spinnaker pole came down and the genoa flogged madly in the wind and discovered that the spinnaker pole car on the mast had flown off and although we thought it had been lost we discovered the mangled car lying in the scuppers. Peter once again performed his magic and hammered it back into shape and together with Grant lashed and frapped it back onto the mast with a length of Dyneema cord. Cathleen heard from her parents that she had passed her matric and was interviewed via SATphone by Cape Talk Radio and Die Burger. Virgil and Lorraine made a better batch of beer bread this time and we put out 2 fishing lines on rods while we all enjoyed an afternoon of music and swopping stories. We were poled out on the genoa goose-winged all afternoon and night with some tricky seas providing heavy weather helm requiring whoever was helming to hang onto the wheel with all their strength. A delicious meal of Pick ‘n Pay Chicken a la King was enjoyed for supper by all. One of the fishing lines was hit by a big fish that took the squid lure clean off.