| Hot and Wet Lia Ditton's Open 40 Dangerous When Wet on her Route du Rhum race.  Yesterday
I told you that there was no wind. Today the word 'wind' should
be removed from all sentences. At 1.1 knots of progress, I could
swim faster. I have had to tie the boom to the deck with bungee
cord as a shock absorber; it was threatening to rip off the
main sheet track. A whisper of something roams across the water,
fluttering the surface; enough to fill the main for twenty seconds
before the boom drops down again fighting the gooseneck with
a hard wrench on the sheet. The effect shudders down the deck.
Thanks to the engineering wizardry of James Walker, the gooseneck
is articulating steel or there might not be a gooseneck still
to speak of. The one patch of shelter in the lee of the main
is perpetually in motion, as the boat creeps forward in a drunken
stupor, bullied by the little eddies of breeze.
There is no reprieve. Down below is a furnace of humidity. Having to boil water to re-saturate my freeze dried meals and run the engine to top up the batteries doesn't help. Replacing the two 12 volt fans at the nav station was an act of genius, but they drag me into a circular dilemma. They keep me cooler. They need power. Power is generated by the engine. The engine outputs heat. The prickles of heat or the result of living in a salty environment, I have minor rashes under my arms, around my elbows and between my fingers. By the end of the OSTAR I had the same problem. This time I am armed with a wonderfully titled American product called 'ITCH-X.' A cold shower in fresh water would probably work better. ' |
Turn
on your VHF, channel 72.' David Lefebvre on 'Knauf Industries,'
a Class 40, called me on the Sat phone. Six miles north and
three miles west, there was a tiny black stick on the horizon.
On asking him how his race was going, he said he had lost
a gennaker over the side and was having keel problems. Whether
he lost it-lost it or the gennaker went over but was retrieved
I didn't establish. He went through a 40kt squall the night
before, which had to be the one the size of a small island
which traversed my radar screen and sent me scrambling on
deck in a mad reefing session, which turned out to be unnecessary
as it passed me by. We both grumbled about the conditions.
At 0300 UTC, the mast head light of 'Knauf Industries' was
still on my horizon, but heading south east. The clouds seemed
to be
coming from that direction, but then the same clouds have
now migrated over me; little white fluffy cumulus against
a baby blue sky like in the cartoon The Simpson's. They bear
not the gift of wind. 'Knauf Industries' may have been lucky
to get away, but maybe he is also battling to move, just a
little further away.