123 logged today in 23 hrs which translates to 128 in 24 which is OK given the much lower winds.
A blog reader emailed yesterday to suggest that it might help Jim and Justin get more sleep when it was rough if I was to bungee them in or use a sheet tucked in tightly over both of them. I mentioned the sheet idea to Justin who thinks it would only be really effective if I also read them a bedtime story.
At some point we must not have been properly facing into wind when raising or lowering the sail as we have ripped the stitching on two of the webbing loops to which the lazy jacks attach. The lazy jacks are lines which catch the sail as it is lowered and make it easier to furl neatly into the lazy bag on the boom which can then be fastened with clips. Without these the sail will just plonk down on the coach roof and have to be tied to the boom. In high winds it is safer if we can reef or quickly put the sail into the lazy bag without having two people high up and exposed during the process. So, essentially this meant somebody was going to have to do some stitching. On questioning the crew to ascertain their experience I found that: Jim conveniently had not a clue what to do but his wife would be happy to help if here, Justin had experience sewing on a button and Louise had made an oven mitt in a home economics. It was clear that I was at least going to have to do enough to get Louise and Justin my ready volunteers up to speed.
With palm, needles and sail thread in hand we sat on the coach roof as I demonstrated my extremely untidy backstitch and how to use the leather palm to push the thick needles through the canvas. I did the first of three lines of stitching and handed over to Louise who completed hers so much faster I was really impressed but felt I should just check to see it was OK. "Louise, did you overlap the stitching at all?" "er, no, should I have?" "Well, this is more of a wavy line than stitching, so if you pull on the end it all just comes out." Thanks to my Mum for making sure I had some idea how to sew. Anyway, Louise is not slow at picking things up and she and Justin completed the remaining work in just the amount of time it took me to clean out under the cooker where a pizza tray had rusted after last night's water ingress and prepare dinner.
Over the course of today we have seen several fenders in the water and with the sails down this evening I motored up to one on which the words "Black Pearl" were clearly written. Spooky! I sincerely hope no one has recently sunk in a boat of this name.
My Midnight to 3 watch now and we are changing time zones again (a bit late) to UT-1 so I am going to go to 3:30 then wake Justin so we each get a 30 minute shorter watch.
An excellent lunch from Louise showed great originality given the paucity of our remaining stores. We had apple and orange salad with mayonnaise and grated coconut, Tuna salad with Smoked paprika and onion and Nachos with melted cheese and hot salsa.
The wind has just picked up and we are once again a sailing vessel rather than a motorboat. Although Louise found it pantie wettingly funny when I said we still were getting "not a sausage" out of the Genoa.
Now, what shall I read the boys at bedtime?
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