No go yesterday... and brief update.

 

 

No joy yesterday I'm afraid. The wind and water was by all means pretty good and at the top end of our range. This meant gusts up to 24 knots but with the main range around 20-21 knots. We have been out in stronger but I didn't want to push it for our first sail back. I know we may have to make use of every day but we still have two months under our belt and would like to start off by exercising a little caution.
Still... it was great to see Walvis Bay back in form after a long spell of light wind.

Right, so what have we been doing? We finally shifted living quaters from the container to a real house as we prepared for the arrival of another team member. Our last four months in Walvis Bay have been spent living in the container. It has been more of a help than a hindrance as we were remarkably undistracted and were always here to deal with immediate problems. Our equipment wasn't spread between two locations, we barely needed a car, it was cheap when it really mattered and combined with the facilities provided by the Yacht club... relatively comfortable. We're fond of our humble container and feel a little extravagant in getting a house. With three people it is however necessary.

On the 20th I left the comfort of the house early and embarked on a 900km round drive inland to pick up the Miraculous Mr 'M' aka Ian Munslow from Windhoek Airport. Ian will bring our team here to 5 which means we are self sufficient for all sailing activities. From our past experience we decided that the third core team member must be a pretty handy boat-builder. Ian has just come fresh from Sweden and building Volvo 70's so he's pretty handy with the sticky stuff as well as being a highly experienced sailor in his own right with a circumnavigation and three solo trans-atlantic crossings (3rd in the Route du Rhum) under his belt. I'm sure that we can provide Mr 'M' with plenty of thrills, spills and busy periods to keep him entertained.
 

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Mr 'M' came bearing gifts in the form of a new solid state onboard video/audio recording system which is much lighter, smaller and more robust than what we had before. He also brought more Carbon fibre and some HARKEN spares. The video system has already been housed and installed so we will see how it performs.

We have also erected the makings of the 'soft-hangar' which will protect the fully rigged Sailrocket from the combined evils of blasting wind and UV rays when it is ashore. Sailrocket is already housed inside as the pictures show and the hangar has already survived its baptism of fire with two windy days.

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It will need some tweaking in order to get it all tight and super strong but the makings of a very handy addition are there. By being fully rigged and prepped all the time with a full team on standby, we can hit the water in relatively short notice if conditions are changeable. As Sailrocket requires quite specific conditions this is pretty handy.

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So we are pretty much up to full strength and on permanent standby, the high tides are getting later in the day now but wind is forecast for both today and tomorrow as well so we will try and get out there if possible.

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