Sunday 20th May Update

tome

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28 Mar 2002
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Sunday 20th May, 8am local 9am BST

46deg 14.25N 4deg 42.7W, more motorsailing, true wind up to 20-25 gusts over 30 since midnight, from NE which is almost where we want to go, dang. LJS and I took in a reef in main at 2am, the staysail instead of jib works well with apparent wind at 20 degrees. 120ish miles from destination, speed 8-10 knots.

A few days ago I sort of fancied arriving Monday morning in daylight, but sometime yesterday I saw a forecast of 25knots ENE on Monday morning and didn't much fancy bashing into that. Maybe it's coming early though. We got all the spare fuel out, chucked all but 40 litres safety into the tanks, both engines on 2000rpm, and are heading for home asap. Pwc turned on the transfer pump to balance the diesel in each tank, but left it on - and then stbd engine worryingly died. First thought was it was full of water (I'd seen some earlier around that engine) and secnd thought was perhaps he's pumped all the diesel out of the breather. Arg. But he balanced it back and all fine, and I got a free show-how for bleeding the fuel. I expect he staged it all on purpose just for me.

The traffic lanes turned up on cue yesterday morning, loads of ships with most AIS targets on scren at one time being 12. Jigged a bit north and south, all fine - but would not have been much fun for one person alone at night if something else had happened, so it was definitely best to have everyone around and cross that area in daylight.

We now have 4-5 metre westerly swell under a 1-2 metre NE swell, plus a knot of tide all whilst going over the continental shelf area. Boat fine though, doing its freight train thing again, bit thumpity thump and typing makes me feel a bit woozy. Still, it could be worse - it could be raining. Ah, now it's raining.

Para is about to break a world record shortly - a whole week with fishing gear continuously deployed and not one fish. Pwc brought his in yesterday - and found the lure had no hooks left on it! Para plans to nominate him for free RSPCA membership.

Should be in port very late tonite, hopefully close in or ashore before pitch dark, praps by 10.30pm BST or 11:30 French Time.

tcm
 
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