15.02.2004
End Day 8: Nearly at Equator
Distance behind Orange 2002 on RTW track now only 3 hours
Batten car repaired Saturday
15 February 2004 - 0510 GMT - 114 nm from the Equator - Cheyenne's powerful push South carried on throughout Saturday with another strong day's run (468 nm, averaging 19.5 kts).
Steve Fossett and crew hope to reach the Equator later this morning, with suitable sacrifices to King Neptune being planned. Pollywog Mark Featherstone naturally trembles as he awaits his appropriate fate!
Mark Featherstone | © Stuart Radnofsky 2004
The deficit to Orange's 2002 RTW record track is now dramatically reduced - to just over 60 nm (as measured to either 0 degrees lat or to the next waypoint S of Africa) - or about 3 hours at Cheyenne's current pace. A third consecutive 450+ nm day has enabled Cheyenne to claw back over 500 nm vs the current record-holder since Wednesday.
Today's picture has Justin Slattery at the top of the mast Saturday morning. While doing a rig check he found one of the batten cars was damaged, so the crew had the main down for a short time to repair it - accompanied, of course by a refreshing aerobic exercise class of hard grinding in the equatorial sun...
Justin Slattery | © Nick Leggatt 2004
Watch Captain Brian Thompson reports during Saturday night (Day 8) crossing the Doldrums - mostly at 20 kts...
"Here we have entered the doldrums tonight, and they have been fairly gentle so far, we have got into one small rain shower where the boat speed dropped to 7 knots briefly, but the rest of the time we have been sailing at 20 knots. Another good days run of 470 miles has seen our deficit to Orange shrink to just under 200 miles (ed. note - further reduced by Sun am, but possibly expanding later as BT describes). Adrienne expects this to expand a little tomorrow as at this point they were out of the doldrums, whilst we might be seeing showers and squalls down to 3S. After the doldrums we are looking at 3 days of good winds down the coast of South America, and then some potentially fluky winds near the south Atlantic high.
Yesterday morning in good flat water Justin went up the mast to check the gennaker halyard, change some bulbs on the masthead and do a regular rig check. We strapped him up with a head cam and DV recorder in a backpack and he got some great footage. On his way down he found that a batten car had lost its bottom pin and the receptacle for the batten was only hanging on by the top pin. This may have been broken for a while as it was on the 3rd batten and too high to see from the deck. But even so we needed to fix it right away in case the batten came adrift and started to spear into the mast.
It was at the time of a watch change so the whole crew was on deck as we furled the big gennaker, turned upwind and dropped the main fully down on to the boom, between the lazy jacks. Then we turned downwind again and sailed with just the solent for the 20 minutes it took to fix the batten car and make sure all the other cars were fine. It was a grub screw that had loosened and allowed the pin to fall out, so we added Sikaflex to the heads of the other grub screws to back up the Loctite that was already on the threads. Whirly was able to make a quick inspection of the mainsail at the same time. Then we ground the mainsail all the way up, a 15 minute operation. Hot work...
Other than that there has been a quiet move to collect noxious items for the infamous crossing of the line ceremony. Mark is the only one not to have been initiated by Neptune and his entourage, and he is well aware of the impending events, he is holding up well, but must be getting a little nervous right now. I would be too by listening to some of the stories Justin in particular is coming up with. Being flogged with dead flying fish and then having to eat it raw, is one of the memorable ones..
Wildlife tally again a little slow today, although there were 2 new entries. I saw a tropic bird in the morning, an elegant white seabird with a long single tail. Mike saw what looked like a 6ft thresher shark, passing a few metres from the boat, and darting off in alarm when it sensed the boat. Other than that a couple of storm petrels and the ubiquitous flying fish...
- Brian"
http://www.brianthompsonsailing.com
|
