Thursday 7:30pm A lovely sunset - and a magnificent Wandering albatross glided by, circled around and came back to have another look!
Went to the mast to have a look at a problem with the lowest mainsail batten - the complete slide has pulled out of the mast track... Will need to lower the sail to that point, in calm conditions and minimal wind, to put the slide back - it should not have been able to pull out of the track insert.
Wind is far less now - we're making just 5kt in SW wind of 10kt maybe.
Friday 6am - soon after dawn. Grey, slight fine, misty drizzle. Checking over latest weather reports and hearing Jean-Luc, Uku and Mark on radio - receiving their weather also. Position and weather report sent to Winlink.
Slow progress to NE in light wind from SE - very close-hauled, making 3.2kt. Forecast is for same for rest of day - becoming light variable - even worse!
1:30pm Success - batten end slide back in place! Realised we were in almost no wind and swell was right down - so got to work in a hurry. Was very unsure I'd manage it - had slept badly overnight, thinking about it...
Had to lower main and remove slides below that one - relieved to find only two other slides below. Couldn't remove ring from track end-stop pin, however hard I tried - but then found the other end of the pin had its ring missing...! Good news, since at least that meant I could remove it and the end-stop and deal with the three slides, but could well have been bad news if the pin had come away by itself... all the sail slides would have slid out and I'd have lost the end stop overboard, no doubt!!
Track is damaged where batten end slide sits just now - expecting it to come out again if sail 'slatting' a lot in light winds - will have to try to avoid that but difficult with so much swell always.
2:30pm We're drifting at 1-2kt, roughly on our ENE course - not 'speedy Gonzales' for sure, today! Constantly having to adjust Fred in the highly variable wind - getting frequent rain showers and sky is totally grey.
1900GMT (=1600LT) - end of Day 100. We made 79 n.ml. DMG over the 24 hr period, measured in a straight line between the two 1900 GMT positions.
Total distance covered from Victoria, B.C., to end of Day 100 (by daily DMGs): 9,532 n.ml.
Distances (at 1900Z): Cape Horn LH: 1305 n.ml. to SW; Falklands: 805 n.ml. to SW; Montevideo: 796 n.ml to NW; Buenos Aires: 893 n.ml to NW Rio de Janeiro: 1132 n.ml. to N; Cape Agulhas (SA): 2873 n.ml. to ENE
Position & weather report for 1900 GMT posted to Winlink.org and Shiptrak.org (using my US callsign KC2IOV):
TIME: 2019/01/11 19:00GMT LATITUDE: 41-46.49S LONGITUDE: 041-43.07W COURSE: 079T SPEED: 3.0kt
WIND_SPEED: 8kt WIND_DIR: SSE SWELL_DIR: S SWELL_HT: 2.0m CLOUDS: 100%
BARO: 1012.4hPa TREND: 0 AIR_TEMP: 16.0C SEA_TEMP: 18.0C
COMMENT: Variable light winds under grey showery clouds. Very little swell.
