From: OmanTri
To: update
Subject: Monday morning
Date: 02/03/2009 05:18:45


After yesterday’s light winds stayed with us for most of the day – we were
able to get some jobs done. The major one was rehositing the genoa – then
sending Loik up the mast to tie it off so that we can furl it. Whilst up
the mast Loik noticed some wear on the mast track, so we used the light
winds to drop the mainsail and change the slide rods in the head board car,
and with the mainsail down – also chance the lahing that ties the sail to
the car. We are taking no chances for the next few weeks. Things naturally
wear down on a long trip like ths, I am not sure how many ‘years’ sailing it
is compared to many boats that spend their lives in a marina, but a good
few, and when we get back many things wiill be replaced as a matter of
routine, somethings sent away for destruction testing so we can learn more
about how things degrade. This of course helps prevent breakages in the
future.

Since we had our genoa back we used it for a couple of hours making some
progress in the back edge of the high presure, and as it moved away so the
wind increased, and moved towards the N and NE. We were soon on port tack
heading E upwind, with our solent jib, and one reef, then just after dusk
2nd reef, and during the darkness hours we changed from solent to staysail.
We are at times underpowered, but the wind is going up and down between18
and 28kts, and we are sailing as fast as we dare given the sea condition.
The sea water is HOT, it’s 21 degrees, which we think means we are in some
helping current, also as the boat speed is reading 14 kts and SOG by the GPS
is 3 kts faster!!!! But we are jumping off some big waves, and down below
you just wince at every impact, poor mobi she’s taking it well so far, but
this is not the time to push, to put the miles we have done so far at risk
by breakng something at this stage. I think that if you look at the (short)
history of sailing multihulls round the world – those that have been
successful have had at some point had to throttle back and limit the speed.
ENZA finished her RTW record slowing down by trailing warps out the back.
The skippers all show great seamanship, and Loik on this trip is doing the
same. We are grateful that we don’t need to be fast, in the next 3 days a
cold front will approach us from behind, and when it arrives we’ll be able
to head firstly NE then N, and we should have a good 3-4 days sailing after
that with well developed SE tradewinds to propel us northwards. We are not
too sure what this means for our advance on the 80 day pace boat, we could
loose a day or two between here and the equator , or we could gain a day if
we are fast enough in the trade winds, so by the equator we could be between
9 and 12 days ahead of 80day pace. Any damage though where we spend time
slowed will change this dramatically, as the pace boat just keeps on going –
totally relentless.

The headwinds have been good for the envioronment though – the wind
generator has been doing a good job and we’ll manage with just one 40 min
charge from the diesel genearator in the last 24 hours, rather than the more
usual 4 x 40 min recharges. I think we chould push it so we wouldn’t have
charged at all in last 24hours ( by waiting until 10am) but we willl need to
run the water maker, and that uses a lot of power so that’s best done with
the generator running. So far we have used less than 100 litres of diesel,
much less than if we had decided to use the wind generator only as a back
up, and leave it packed up until a time of need. It was def. worth fitting
onboard.

Mohsin is dong a phone in to the Sultan School in Muscat today, a chance for
the students to ask him directly what life is like out here – they are
likely to get some pretty good sound effects to illustrate his words as we
continue to crash upwind.