After Nellie’s personal best noon – noon run, the wind moderated overnight. By morning, we were down to force 2, but at least the sun was shining. The wind then steadily got lighter until with the finish line just 28 miles away, less than 3 hours at yesterday’s pace, it died away to nothing. So close and yet so far!
Tom as acting watch leader on the 8am to 12:30pm watch was kept busy marshalling his troops as yards were braced, sails handed, and then re-set. When eventually the wind filled in, it was coming from the opposite direction. Since nobody had bothered to fit wheels to the ship, we had to tack after a hurried lunch, but at least we were moving again. With no rest for the voyage crew, and having retraced our path of the previous few hours, and with little perceptible progress towards the finish line (!) it was time to tack ship again barely 2 hours later. Hopefully we will now make some progress in the right direction.
No such luck! After another 2 hours, the Russian defences in the form of a small island frustrated our progress, causing us to tack yet again. So off we go in the direction of Helsinki, in order to creep up on Russia from a slightly different angle. Next time with any luck, and a following wind we might get to the finish line under cover of darkness.
On the educational side, yesterday we should have had a wearing talk about tacking, or was that a tacky talk about wearing; anyway it had to be postponed, so the tacking we are doing at the moment is all a wonderfully mysterious process which we hope will see us across the finish line…..or not?
Compared to the last few days life seems blissfully upright, especially for the wheelies amongst us, who had begun to wonder if we would ever sit up straight again, and be able to go from one side of the deck to the other without a posse of helpful bodies to aid our progress.
So it’s sunny, we’re sailing, what more could we want? Well apart from the wind in the right direction!
Fwd Stbd watch