Playground

16th March 2001 – Night Watch 2 0400hrs – 0800hrs Somewhere between Yokohama and Okinawa

mascot69 — Fri, 18 Mar 2011 18:38:20 +0000

In fact we were somewhere near 26′ 04’60 Lat 127′ 48′ 20 Long

Ah my diary, I greet you with but more of the same news…..even less wind, precisely 0.00 knots of it for a large portion of the watch and it looks now as if we will not make the Sun Palace Hotel with balconies of overflowing greenery, not dissimilar to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, tonight (Ho Hum).

Plymouth Clipper are behind us. We had a fisherman come and talk to us which was amusing, trying to converse in the middle of nowhere when no body could speak a word of the other person’s language.

Around 06.30hrs the wind woke up and we moved headsails from Windseeker (gossamer thin) to LWT (Lightweight) Spinnaker to No 1 in about 15 minutes smoothly and efficiently and got no compliant from our skipper 10/10.

Realistic finish will be late afternoon today.

Following snoozing during my offwatch, I woke to find the our good yacht Portsmouth Clipper inshore, Plymouth offshore, Genoa (Genny)up, and had overhauled us by 6 miles (Marvellous!). A quick discussion ensued as we came on watch (1400hrs – 2000hrs afternoon watch) as to the merits of getting our Genny up, as all bar one of the previous attempts had produced zip success, we decided to go for it.

For the non sailors reading this, please ignore the next paragraph as it will read as if it is a foreign language and will probably make little sense.

The plan was to tack, drop the headsail, raise the windeseeker, and genny, with the genny on the outside and then drop the windseeker, resulting in one head sail up being the genny. Due to the increase in wind, we scrapped that and went for the straight hoist which went well. Had the Genny up for half an hour, not particularly well trimmed, and then dumped it, amidst much gnashing and castigation from OBS (our beloved skipper).

Maintained our 4th position throughout the watch with the 3 boats behind slowly catching up, but not sufficient to cause too much stress.

Night Watch 1 (2000 – 0001hrs 17 March 2001)

Woke to find we were motoring, and had finished 4th a mediocre result, and prepping for docking. After waiting for confirmation of the results, they were:

Portsmouth 4th

London 5th

Glasgow 6th

Bristol 7th

with a time gap between us and Bristol being 75 seconds, over a race of 6.4 days and 1094 nautical miles, really rather close.

The usual party followed when we docked as it always feels as if we finish races on a Friday night, irrespective of the actual day and time, on this occasion it was early saturday morning, so pretty close then!

24th Feb 2001 – Heading towards Japan

mascot69 — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 12:14:44 +0000

With the boat now on whites only, the pitch is constantly at 25 – 30 degrees, making life challenging, add to this the crashing through the waves and the leaking forepeak hatch…life is now survival. Beating through waves 10 – 15ft high, brings a cacophony of sounds forming a predictable pattern, which when heard in my forepeak bunk is wearing and non stop noise which little by little gets into your soul.

I hear water rushing past my bunk which is almost tranquil in its resonance. As we hit a wave there is a 1 – 3 second silence as the bow raises out of the water……before 37 tonnes comes thundering down somewhere below my bunk with a back breaking crash which bounces me off my mattress and then forces you down as the hull starts to move again. This is happening 24 hours a day, without respite, combine this with water gushing into the forepeak through the hatch and life becomes a miserable existence. Toby and Paul have moved out as they can no longer stand the noise and squalor. We have renamed the forepeak “The swamp”!

Sunday 11th Febuary 2001 – The day that didn’t happen

mascot69 — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 15:59:03 +0000

In reality today did not happen in my life or those of Portsmouth Clipper as we crossed the International Date Line. We saw approx 30 minutes of it- but being on mother watch, I was asleep and missed it!