13/02/2017
Track the guys progress on the UCT 2 Rio page. Heres the day 11 update:
Day 11 Update from the boat:
Wrote this here and there over the last few days, sorry if some of it makes no sense.
Thursday afternoon had us drifting around from rain cloud to rain cloud attemting to keep the boat pointing East despite the fact that boat speed hadn't gone above 1 knot since breakfast. The plan was to squeeze in between the big breeze to the South and the parking lot to the North. So we decided to turn the donkey on and head South to find our goldilocks breeze to get our harry potter on.
Sadly it turns out the wind in this area, like our gas cooker, throttle and happiness, has only two settings very off and very on. Come midnight I was woken and handed the helm by Alex with the sound advice "keep taking them up the bum, i'm going forward" we were now surfing down breakers easily the size of the boat with 30+ knots of breeze and boat speeds of 15 knots. Great fun, if only we were going the right direction. We took the J3 down and had another attempt at beating into conditions we initially thought were just a bad squall but turned out to last overnight and well into the next day. Unfortunately the slamming was just too bad to bare and we spent the next 18 hours running North with it undoing days of painful difting by the hour. Some of the larger waves kept us on high alert as we did not want to find out how the boat would handle taking one on the beam. Regardless, who we have been in regular contact with, continued on through the storm and subsequently pulled a fair few miles on us in our friendly race to the bar. Although we were more than happy to trade these miles for a cooked meal and a dry(ish) bed and pudding!
Tim and I saw what we believe to be an albatross the morning after the storm. Very rare this far North. We've also had a large black sea bird with distinctive white makings on its head and legs following us for the past week, although it's tough to tell if its the same bird as he's had many friends visiting.
We are now fetching toward the SE in 10-15 knots of wind and 7 knots of boat speed, in an attemt to get below some nasty looking pressure coming in the next few days. And finally be able to enjoy some downwind sailing. Here's hoping this warm weather follows us South.
We hear Cape Town is still without rain, if only we could bring some of our rain back with us. Some of the downpours have been nothing short of torrential, great opportunities for a quick shower.
Our 'f***y fungus' bum cream is now worth more than gold; I'm down to my last extra small condom, they are the ultimate rain coat for my finger; we're onto the second harry potter book and are already planning on how we are going to spend our winnings from the next pub quizz; Albert has been force feeding us Rehidrat, apparently we are too grumpy without it and we've been eating like kings now that the kitchen is no longer an uphill climb, yesterday's bully beef bolognaise was one for the books!
This may be the last photo as I think I left the gopro charger behind!
Fish caught: 0
Cheers
Pete
