Sports Day Turnagain Style

August 1st Update    

Today was BEAUTIFUL!!. The temperatures were great, and the wind was only about 10 kts on average all day. While it did not lend to fast sailing, we were able to have the hatches open and keep inside temperatures very reasonable. We made a ton of water, had showers and did some maintenance on the boat.  The furling system is holding together, and the galley faucet that was leaking is now fixed. 

The crew has quickly gelled and is working well together. They have also settled into their respective watches.  Things are great and we are making great time towards home (well… headed to Alaska currently but hopefully the winds will change as forcast and let us curve to the east), even if a few of us need to find our sea legs (hence the short blog today). 

Fishing isn't going great. We have temporarily given up on the Kit-Kat and gone to more traditional store bought lures still with limited success. We had a bite at dinner, but it promptly threw the hook. 

Dave and I are missing "Sports Day" back at home, but have been thinking up some games we might be able to do on board. Dave's kids and mine are the same age, we have traditionally spent sports day being the supporting dad and doing the horse races (being the horse), or the one with the bucket on our head while our kids try to fill it faster than the other kids and their dad's using a sponge (and of course getting Dad totally soaked). So we may do piggy back races up and down the deck tomorrow am, during the traditional land races time frame, and we may try some sort of water event in the afternoon, but have not come up with anything that would be safe at the current speeds we are sailing. 

The winds are expected to start backing tomorrow mid to late day, which will likely allow us to hoist a kite. Then entire crew is excited about that.   

We all miss you
Turnagain

July 31....Drip....Drop...Drip...Drop

Today we had some excitement. There were many squalls, most bigger than the last.  During one of the bigger ones, the crew had reefed everything down and was quite proud of their work. I came on deck and quickly noticed that the headsail furling unit had what appeared to be a serious problem.  The side plates that hold the drum down had become disconnected and the entire foil and furler had slide up the forstay by 3 inches. Luckily we found one of the pieces that held it all together (there were two at the start of the trip) and we have put things back together enough to get us to Vancouver (hopefully).

We had some great sailing today, with speeds above 8kts for what felt like most of the day.

After sunset, we caught a fish as well. It was small and what appeared to be a barracuda, so we returned it to the sea. We will try again first thing in the am. We are thinking we will even get out the hand line and try some different lures, but we will see what the winds are like and our speeds. 

We have some other maintenance items to tend to including the galley sink. The faucet is leaking (a slow drip) and is driving Travis nuts with the water pump kicking on randomly throughout the day. We need to do our best to keep him from going crazy this early in the trip :) 

Until tomorrow,

Turnagain crew