Day 30 –  The lull

The day started with a gentle north east wind. In order to keep pushing forward we needed to do a series of tacks but it was slow going and we could not afford to use the last of our diesel for motoring, estimating that we only had about 15l left which we needed to conserve for our arrival in Cape Town. An error had been made in deciding not to replenish our diesel reserve in Tristan.

We used the constant tacking to practice our sail trim and it became quite a group event in the cockpit with many ‘expert’ opinions implemented with varying degrees of success to coax every little bit of speed out of the trim correction.

In the early afternoon the wind shifted to come from behind us, only 7 knots, but enough for us to hoist the gennaker for a few hours.

Sunset again ushered a lull in the wind and we were once more wallowing.

It was frustrating that so close to Cape Town, with only 200nm to go, we had only made 15nm headway in 24 hours. At that point Freddie offered to row but we had no oars. Instead Joey and Freddie bailed out the V berth, removing about 30l of water from the lockers under their bunks that had leaked during heavy weather. They hoped that lightening ballast would speed us on. This was sadly , to no avail.

It was full credit to the crew for maintaining a good sense of humour about the situation. We would just have to plan a few more bully beef meals.