The weather has been typically autumn like the last few days: greyt
skies, low hanging clouds, rain and it has been too warm for the winter
coat and too cold for the summer jacket. The wind has been changing a
lot: it turned from the nose to the back, went up and then down and then
fluky and then the same again. This is caused by a low pressure system
which is passing south of us. The sailing has nonethe less been
fantastic because despite the changes in strengtth the wind has not
dropped below 15 knots. Close hauled sailing is still one of my
favourites especially when we truck through the waves with 11 knots and
the seas are gentle. The additonal headsail makes it very powerfull
sailing and steady and easy to drive.
Been up the mast again (not too high) to do a small repair on the sails
and up the spinaker pole to do the "bow duty" of attaching our tripping
line. I am feeling more and more comfy swinging on the halyards. It is a
great sight looking down from the spinaker pole and mast.
Oh shit! A whale just kicked our rudder! Skip is checking for damage
now. It was a really weird bang I hope we are OK and that the whale is
OK too. We have seen several small groups of whales in our vicinity and
some have been really close but not this close just yet. Hitting whales
is our worst nightmare. Skip just came back: rudder damage :-(.
Let's see how we deal with this blow...
