Date 26th May 2005
Location 1500 miles from Boston
Weather Sunny and too still
Heading Any direction that keeps the yacht moving
Skipper's Comments
I have said it before, there is never a dull day at sea during the Global Challenge Race. However, I did have my reservations in this statement as we hadn't tacked or gybed for 10 days and had only changed our spinnakers as the wind strength dropped or built. The toughest job onboard was dealing with my personal emotions and of course keeping a crew of 17 hot, sticky, bored, circumnavigators happy.
That all changed at the 5100 miles point.
We not only changed our headsail that had been hanked on the forestay all leg, to the genoa. We also tacked and changed direction as the wind shifted.
This kept us busy some of the day that was mainly spent floating, going nowhere. It was a tedious and frustrating day, made even worse by each polling of the fleet. Every six hours I thought we couldn't be the only ones unlucky with the weather to be sitting in a big hole of no wind.
Another yacht surely had to be close enough to be having similar problems. Alas, it was not to be. As I plotted the positions and measured how far each yacht had sailed in the six hours, I was distraught to learn that the beautiful sunshine with no cooling breeze was for us alone. The crew is thankful of the sun, but please let's have some wind as well.
In my attempt to keep our big arsed 45 tonne yacht moving at all costs, we tried a combination of a few sails. We had nothing to lose, but what we did had little effect. This kept us amused for about an hour, and surprisingly after two kite hoists and drops we returned to the same sail combination as we were at originally. That's sailing for you.
Even our yacht, Imagine it. Done. must have been feeling frustrated, or she just wanted some more attention. She blew a fuse and gave myself and Neil some extra work moving a pump for the water maker around, so we could continue to make water by desalination.
The good news is that we are still moving, just, in a direction. We have learnt today that direction is second to actually moving. If you are able to choose them together then you are sorted. Our direction changed as often as the breeze from west, through north and then eastwards. This is interesting when your destination is on a bearing of 315 degrees.
Dee Caffari/Yachting World, 26 May 2005
