Day 3 - Irish truffles and weather routing - skipper Pete
Day 3 got off to a good start with some decent wind and us carrying our poled out headsail.
The end of the power embargo enabled us to use autopilot through the night and make quite a bit of water for hot freshwater showers for all. It was to be a day of culinary delight. Nacho used some of the Irish truffles (potatoes to some people) to whip up a batch of papas arragudas, a traditional canarian dish. The process is to boil new potatoes in just enough seawater to cover them and boil until it has evaporated, then pour over lashings of chilli sauce. Bloody marvellous. The truffles alongside a good burger made for a smashing lunch.
Chef Andy Holland served his signature Pork & cider stew with fancy pasta which was a veritable taste sensation. The ARC organise a daily net, with volunteers acting as net controllers on designated days. One of the net controllers is Vagaris sailed by JKakie and Adrian who we knew from Las Palmas. We hadn't been participating so far due to the electrical issues and general laziness. The procedure is that the net controller of the day reads out a synopsis of the weather forecast then asks each boat to report their position and wind speed/direction. After this it's open discussion time. We decided to try and lighten the mood a little with a few jokes which served a dual purpose of giving a few laughs and reminding everyone on the net that Germans and humour are mutually exclusive. Except if they are the subject.
We had a bit of a dilemma over which route to take; the position reports indicated that those who chose the more Northerly or Southerly routes were experiencing stronger winds and were a good bit further ahead. The ARC weather forecast is at best vague, and we are limited to small weather file downloads at sea, so we got in touch with our UK based forecaster (Simon Keeling) for his view on our heading and the medium term outlook. Simon reckoned there would be little merit in heading South as there will be very light winds there by the weekend and that maintaining our current heading may be the best decision in the meantime. They say it's a marathon, not a sprint, so we're going to keep on our heading which will take us on a great circle course to St Lucia. If anyone's interested in the weather, Simon's website is www.weatherweb.net and provides free daily videos and resources for UK and worldwide weather.
Towards the end of the day, the wind picked up and Crewmen Couch and Damo experimented with sailplans eventually settling on 2 reefs in the main and a full genoa. We carried this rig through the night and were pleased with the ground we made.
In other news, we lost a fish (certain it was a whopper), dodged a 950ft cruise ship and listened to a mad frenchman in a 33ft boat telling oil tankers to get out of the way.
Later alligators.
