Arrival at Mindelo
Saturday we woke up to find 4 flying fish had hitched a ride with us. Unfortunately for them it didn�'t turn out as well as it did for us.
During the light winds on Saturday we found ourselves pulling away from some of the other boats. During most of the day we had set all our sails. This includes the jib, mainsail, mizzen sail and a mizzen stay sail. As the name implies, the mizzen stay sail is flown from the mizzen mast between the two masts. It is a downwind sail that works well in light air from a beam reach to almost dead downwind. Ketches were built in the �'70s to work around some racing rule that forbade the use of spinnakers. They could use a sail that looks and feels like a spinnaker instead to improve downwind performance. For us it added about a half to a full knot and significantly increased the SA/Displacement ratio.
We were the 80th boat overall to cross the finish line at 12:05 Sunday morning. Our speed had dropped to about 4.5 knots. We even beat out at least 1 catamaran. It was quite eerie arriving in the dark (the moon was well hidden by cloud cover). The finish line was between a a point of land and a lighted rock about a mile off the shore. Your eyes really play tricks on you at night and depth perception doesn�'t exist anymore.
So we had a good run from Las Palmas with strong winds and messy seas. We were a little beat up from being bounced around the cabin like ping pong balls but we survived.
During the light winds on Saturday we found ourselves pulling away from some of the other boats. During most of the day we had set all our sails. This includes the jib, mainsail, mizzen sail and a mizzen stay sail. As the name implies, the mizzen stay sail is flown from the mizzen mast between the two masts. It is a downwind sail that works well in light air from a beam reach to almost dead downwind. Ketches were built in the �'70s to work around some racing rule that forbade the use of spinnakers. They could use a sail that looks and feels like a spinnaker instead to improve downwind performance. For us it added about a half to a full knot and significantly increased the SA/Displacement ratio.
We were the 80th boat overall to cross the finish line at 12:05 Sunday morning. Our speed had dropped to about 4.5 knots. We even beat out at least 1 catamaran. It was quite eerie arriving in the dark (the moon was well hidden by cloud cover). The finish line was between a a point of land and a lighted rock about a mile off the shore. Your eyes really play tricks on you at night and depth perception doesn�'t exist anymore.
So we had a good run from Las Palmas with strong winds and messy seas. We were a little beat up from being bounced around the cabin like ping pong balls but we survived.
Comments