St. Helena to Ascension Island…..Day 4
June 13th, written the morning of the 14th, 2013 (Western Hemisphere) Time: GMT
Right after I posted the morning blog yesterday, the winds dropped to 10-12 knots and I was sure we wouldn\’t make the Anchorage today.
About three hours later, we put up the spinnaker on port tack and the wind shifted against us! Hence, it was time to jibe. We first had to take down the spinnaker,
jibe the boat and our new course was laying the island. Back up went the spinnaker and the winds came up to 17-22 knots. We decided to stay with it for the night and under full main and spinnaker we were flying! We did 105 miles in 11 hours, mostly between 8.5-12 knots. The seas were not building up, the waves right behind us. The night was clear, the fair weather cumulus clouds created no squalls and we were making time.
Nikki did a great job of steering with the auto pilot which was no mean feat with the constant shifts in the wind and the varying strengths. It wasn\’t really even a pattern you could anticipate. The winds would go ESE then SE and back. The speed went between 17 and 22 with a few gusts in the 25 knot range. He two watches is why we will make it in today!
When we changed watch, we dropped the spinnaker at 4 a.m., tacked (not jibed) the boat and put a reef in the main sail as we did it.
This allowed us to change to a better heading to the island and not have to go through the jibe maneuver. Raised the genoa on the pole to port and now we have only 49 miles to our way point with 12 hours of daylight left. This anchorage is a bit trickier than St. Helena and I want full daylight when we enter.
We\’re still making a healthy 6.5-8 knots and should see the island within about 3 hours. Looks like we\’ll put in a very respectable 190 nm day of which the first 6 hours we never went over 7 knots.
Next report should be from the anchorage. I\’ll send the position report shortly and update it when anchored.
KIT,
Scott and Navigator Nik!..