BLUEMOMENT

I was coming out of the strait of gibraltar on saturday and the forecast 22 knots turned (as usual around Tarifa) into double that and eventually reached 44knots and blew the sail out. Before the rippity bang, al was well and I had the spanking new downwind Parasailor up. So my wind-powered furniture van-cum-toolshed leapt forth and instead of a dull 8 knots in 20knots of wind, it decided to go surfing at 16-20 knots. I looked down a 3+metre wave every minute or so and then got yanked down it with ever increasing velocity. Yeeha! And ooer. Much like skiing down black runs whilst sitting on an elephant. Not much way out of this one, but about 3000 miles of searoom ahead i reckoned something would turn up. The autopilot gave up early on, so we're handsteering and wondering how far downwind we'll have to go before the northerly blows us south to the canaries where we plan to go. Also, heh, we're inside the TSS but need to turn south soon. The ship in the TSS is doing 12knots and we overtake it ... so that when the TSS ends and I want to turn south ahead of it with lots of speed and sails, i reckon I'm ok cos he's using engines, not in a TSS... but I just overtook him?

Anyway shortly after that something did turn up -the jibsheet went bang and the sail slightly ripped in ensuing flappity harashaharash, but i sewed it up enroute, new lines, all fine, and now in lanzagrotty. I got Nice James aka PembrokeshirePromise in AP along as crew, ace racy sailor, what a great trip.

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Most entertaining post Matt.

Enjoy LZ, it's Grim Up North for the forseeable future.

- W

Last time home, we had the humiliation of being overtaken by a Kayak ..........

puddock wrote:Last time home, we had the humiliation of being overtaken by a Kayak ..........

It's no shame to be overtaken by a kayak, they do 4+ knots and we don't think about starting the engine till we have slowed down to 3 or 2 knots.

I'm not sure I could stand the excitement of surfing down waves @ high teens of knots with a kite up, is it good when you stop? I presume that big sigh of relief you have when you survive to get tied up somewhere is even bigger than normal.

The high speed stuff reminds me of days long gone.
I assume nowadays - especially in a TSS, one should show one's balls by day and red-over-red by night!
Certainly in my case we were not in full control, and usually ended the run with a capsize. ( but these were toys in comparison....) gets the adrenalin going though!

sahona wrote:, one should show one's balls by day !

I think he was doing that, out sailing in 44knots of wind They sound like quite large ones as well.