at sea
20.21.00 N
025.35.00 W
1100
s/y safari
12.08.08
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trouble in paradise. when we do watch handover, usually there's some direction about what our range of preferred course is based on the predictions about weather and wind behaviour. as we do get quite up-to-date data, it's usually pretty safe to predict that our wind will be x knots coming from y degrees until z time. when new conditions may or should apply. local conditions prevail, as they say, and sometimes the weather just doesn't do what anyone behind a desk in some other part of the world thinks it might.

we're on the edge of the range, see, and there's been all this talk of goosewinging, see, and i was even asked point blank if i had any experience with it, and i of course replied, 'a certain amount.' i was given a brief (perhaps superfluous), 'this is how we gybe the headsail' tutorial. no problem. all leading up to what? my directives said that our 'ideal' course was 245° and we'd been having some trouble making 270°. not undoable, but slightly noisy. i elected to go for the wing-on-wing.

not met with approval. after about four minutes, russ came on deck. i was given a royal 'bollocking,' as they say. we're often told that russ is not at his best when he immediately wakes. and usually for about 8 hours after that. this was quite exceptional though. when i assured him that it was not meant to be malicious, he said that he was just 'having a go' and continued to have it. whatever it takes. we immediately undid the goose-wing, went from 248° to about +5 of the maximum of our former range and remained so for the rest of my watch. curiously, we have been goose-winging for most of the rest of today. the problem is that i took too much initiative in the process. no decision-making allowed. maybe wing-on-wing is a bigger deal than i think it is. hm.