Monday 22nd April 2013 Into New Zealand time - clock is now exactly 12 hours ahead of GMT - makes for easy reckoning!
Lovely clear sky overnight and into morning. By midday, quite a lot of cloud had spread over - but still mainly sunny. Wind backed to the WSW - gybed sails well before first light - at 4.30am. Swell still big and tossing us around overnight but by morning, conditions were far less rough.
Wind dropped right down for most of the night and we were still heading due E, nearly on a dead downwind run... so speed was well down - to around only 2kt which really cut down our daily DMG ('distance made good' in a straight line over 24hrs)
2pm Back down to have the mug of fresh cofee I thought I'd enjoy an hour or so back... but had found the genoa flapping loose again - the genoa sheet in use had gone again - torn apart at the car. Looks to me as though the cars are all orientated incorrectly on the track. They were all removed when the genoa track was re-bedded to prevent the leaks through the deck that I'd been suffering from on my previous RTW trip. Looking at the supports on the cars for the sheaves taking the genoa sheets to the winch, it seemed possible to change them over fairly easily - when I tried it, that was certainly the case - wasn't as difficult a job to change them over as I'd feared.... took all of half an hour and I'm hoping we don't get a repeat of that problem.
Soon after sunset, with the wind seeming to have veered into the W, I decided to pole out the genoa after gybing the mainsail. Took a time, with the pole twisting at the top support a few times, just to make life difficult for me , but finally got it organised and raised the pole OK, so we're now goosewinged with the genoa and pole to port & mainsail to starboard. - feels so much more stable now. Speed also increased with genoa working better now.
Beautiful sunny day and balmy night - full of stars and a bright moon to help light up th scene when dealing with the pole.
D.M.G. over 24hr to 10am LT: 93 n.ml. - down due to light wind for a long time overnight. Hobart: 1142 n.ml. (233T) ;Sydney: 845 n.ml. (262T); New Zealand's North Cape: 255 n.ml. (109T)
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For my positions and track, see:
www.svnereida.com - 'Travels' - "Where is 'Nereida'?"
and/or:
http://www.exactearth.com/