Thursday was lovely – it was wall-to-wall sunshine and calm seas – we had a light 12 knot breeze, so it was ideal to put up our big parasailor munch up the miles. I’m still not really in love with the sail (and i’m hoping it’ll grow on me). It looks amazing when it’s up, but it’s very “faffy” to launch and can be a pig to retrieve (more on that later). It just means it’s not your go-to sail for a lot of the sailing, which is what I was hoping for give how much it cost…
In Galapagos, one of the most popular t-shits is “I love Boobies” and the blue footed boobie is very cool to look at, but the problem is they shit everywhere (and I mean everywhere). So at sunset a pair of boobies started circling the boat. Given the parasilaor flying really well, I decide we’ll keep it up through the night as i’m full of other stories of ocean crossings where people said they set the sail at the start and left up for days on end… lets see if that works… I go to bed at 8pm and Tates has to wake me up as the wind has gotten light, keeps shifting and the sail collapsing. We get it all set again and spot the two Boobies are roosting up in mast.
oh, ok cute, not ideal, but there’s not much we can do and I go back to bed. Then a little later poor Tates it hit with, it’s “oh dear god, what’s that horrible smell!”… Ah, it’s boobie shit! and they have crapped all over the boat. (picture taken the next day)
I happen to wake up at this point and knowing the crapping is only going to get worse, I use one of the ropes on the mast to “encourage” them to fly away.. the top one leaves quickly, but the bottom one decided to just drop down onto the deck. It then proceed to puke up it’s dinner in front of us before chasing Tatum down the side of the boat. Finally it sits on top of the boat computer and has a big angry shit on the computer as a parting gift before I give it a push over the side an it flies away. Yes, I get is was likely scared and i wouldn’t mind them on the boat if it wasn’t for the stinky dumps. But it was one very angry boobie!
At this point i’m awake and after the boobie episode, I take over at 11:30pm.
All is quiet and then at 12:20 it’s like somebody hits a switch and the wind is up to 20 knots and starting to gust higher. Whilst we’re flying along, we’re into a real risk blowing the sail out if the wind gets much stronger. So we go to get the sail down – with that much wind, its a real handful to get it doused. I wake up Tates and we have to run the engines flat-out to reduce the apparent wind and turn the boat to collapse the leading edge of the sail. After that, I can use all my weight to pull the sock down over to wrap it up… Given it’s still blowing hard, we just dump it straight into the locker for the night and even that was hard work… And yes, before anybody askes, we were both wearing lifejackets and clipped on with safety lines.
We sailed through the night with just the jib and this morning we’re running along with the jib and 3rd reef (which we’ll probably drop to 2nd reef later). Bit it’s definitely more lively out here today…
As i’m writing this, we are just about to hit 1 degree north, which is our queue to turn onto a more westerly course. Fortunately the current is filling in nicely as we have about 1.5 to 2 knots pushing us along now… we”ll have a play around to see if can find the strongest zone.. I’ll be off cleaning up Boobie poop later.
Till tomorrow peeps.
One Response
Guess you don’t need a gym as you get your workout with changing the sails