Tuesday, 2 May 2006 at 09:09
Yep, it's time for us to complain a little about the temperature. It's 38 degrees down below in the bunk where I have just woken up (in a pool of sweat), on deck the sun is behind a few clouds and it's much nicer. But when it comes out - well its time to dive for cover it's really, really hot, we are only at 18N so not sure what to expect when we close on Malaysia.
All is good onboard we have had some good wind recently - up to 19kts - forcing a few changes; reef in, reef out, genoa furl, solent out etc. We are back to full index and genoa now. During once such sail change Tomma and I came on deck to assist and managed to break the belt in the winch pedestal - such is the strength of two rested guys!!! Anyway that means that we have no pedestal so just using the winches like a small boat - with a handle in the top. We can still double up when required, but it just shows how efficient the pedestal is when going from 1 reef to full index - it's a long, long job now.
A major knock on effect of the excess temperature is the lack of padding that our thermals and waterproofs and boots provide us. I am sure we will be more bruised after this leg than any of the other rougher legs - simply because we don't have the protection. A tap on the ankle with boots is barely noticeable - where as now with trainers or bear feet it can ache for an hour! Elbows are also fairly vulnerable!
We have just crossed the Sanya line and can just see the island in the distance; it looks like a top place, and one that we would like to be stopping at especially as we are sure they will be serving cold beer, and good food. We are now off to the south now to find Vietnam and a new country on our tour. Again it's a shame that we won't be stopping on this trip but may be next time. The weather for the next few days looks to be light headwinds again. However all the advice we are getting is that it's going to be moving round more to the east - it will be indexly port tack down the coast, and reaching if we are lucky. Now that we are across the Sanya line we are going to tack and head SE looking for the shift earlier and giving us a better angle to sail south.
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