Day 14 Up and down with the Parasailor

Day 14 and the crew kindly chose not to wake Skippy and let him catch up on sleep – he’s looking a lot better for it and full of mischief again.

Susie’s enhanced tacker webbing!

The wind forecast for the day was for anything from NE to SE, and added to that the sea state has become confused from these differing angles. So it was time to get the parasailor down and hoist it on the other gybe. It also gave us a chance to check everything over. Much to our surprise, the tacker that holds it to our forestay was half way through losing it’s holding, with its webbing wearing through. Susie brought out some hot hair ballooning webbing and did a very good job of reinforcing it. Plus the boys fitted shoft shackles to reduce wear on it. Back up went the parasailor. Then the wind shifted and back down came the parasailor.

So to the tune of Grand Old Duke of York…

When it was up, it was up
When it was down, it was down
And when it was only half way up, we realised we had it the wrong way round.

Well not quite, but it kept us busy, hoisting and dropping!

Scrub the Crew Episode IV (how many episodes will there be?) was implemented. It’s so hot now, you run from the shower before you start sweating downstairs.

The Great Adina Bake Off is shaping up. Gareth cooked his first loaf of bread – but sabotage was being reported as Susie switched off the gas as it was cooking. Looks like some will go to great lengths to win this one.

On the food front, we’re still eating well. The tin-foiled carrots are doing nicely, we still have tomatoes but two weeks on they are turning so ratatouille is on the menu. We have plenty of food to keep us going given the length of this trip due to light winds – our feelings are with the racers who look to keep weight to a minimum and won’t have the stock piles we do!

Two weeks on and we are still a ‘dry’ boat – believe it or not no-one has had the inclination for alcohol and tonic and lime goes quite nicely thank you!

As dawn breaks we’re sailing into a dreaded wind hole. You’d think we’d had more than our fair share of light winds this trip. Adina is a heavy boat weighing in at 21 tonnes and she needs wind to move. The next 48 hours look to be testing, very testing. We are sailing a little south to try and avoid the worst. But the fleet will engage motors and positions will all change again.

Onto our quiz and it should come as no surprise that it was Skip who was after a weather forecaster after sailing south of the Verdes to find no wind. Today’s question – who said “You can tell marine gear oil as it’s tarter than engine oil.”

This is Yacht Adina – dry for 14 days!