47 52 N
11 48 W
0700 UTC
06.08.08
s/y flying cloud
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more learning curve. instructed to 'experiment and trim the sails.' i had a lousy time trying to get the boat to the requisite 7 knots. this business of a forward travelleris entirely new to me and the part where we can set the lateral location of the main traveller is also quite new.
"This is not a dinghy." ~ words of wisdom from matt
no kidding. it's 35' longer than any boat i have ever sailed and it weighs 12 tons. i did have it at 5.5 knots, but with some fussing more than i had expected (which /did/ please me) it was 6.2 and then 6.5. of course, that'd be matt fussing. not me. i recognized that matt would be getting impatient any second and thought i'd head that off and aks for help sooner than later.
the solent traveller, though it was blown (i.e. removed completely from the winch and the line was entirely slack) was stuck. no way for me to know that it sometimes does that. easing the sheet solved that problem. (oh yes, that means loosening a rope-attached-to-a-sail).
we then lasted about a half hour until the gennaker came out. wind conditions less than ideal. i am yet convinced that the only way to learn is to make mistakes, though i am also convinced that the word 'sucks' need not be involved. in the how-to-motivate-and-educate-your-volunteer-labour-force manual, i'm not sure that it suggests adversity and discouragement as sure fire tactics. up there with micromanagement.
having said that, my experiment of not messing with the mainsail's traveller at all worked very well in hour three of my watch. we were mostly or entirely above 7 1/2 knots and though vis was very low due to this crazy fog, the radar was my friend and i even remembered how to set up the VRM / EBL to track an object ominously lurking at 130 and 8 nm. a cloud? that kind of radar worksinconveniently less well in fog / rain / big waves. kinda funny, isn't it. when you need it most. visibility was low enough that i was doing pretty near constant horizon sweeps breaking only long enough to check the VRM / EBL and my ominous lurking thing.
this afternoon on watch we had a container vessel (french speaking, so it was carrying les containers) portside at about 2 nautical miles. quite close, but only a silhouette. ghostly in the fog and barely visible. when i tried calling it on the radio matthew aksed me if i had been in the rum; i invited him to stand exactly where i was standing. when he did, he immediately got on the VHF and started repeatedly calling the ship.
wild. the container ship or tanker midori and i saw that morning was waaay closer. but this time there was fog, so it was indeed best to be safe.
a random list of things that are 'bad luck'
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