A Pants Gybe and Other Adventures Mid-Atlantic

The FCS crew on Challenger 2 were racing to St Lucia in the ARC Rally. Things were going well until a problem with the rigging meant a couple of repairs were needed in Cape Verde before carrying on.

Yesterday Gary posted this cryptic message: “Ps. Joe’s lesson learnt for the day, remove underwear from the guard wires before we gybe” Today Joe reveals all, ladies cover your eyes!

Monday 4 December 2017

Steve’s birthday party was topped off by a brilliant full moon yesterday evening which bathed the boat in a soft half-light and cast a sparkling silver light over our bow wave. Good speed was made throughout the night and early morning and in order to maintain momentum Skipper called for a gybe immediately after breakfast.

The gybe appeared to go extremely smoothly, that is until I noticed a big gap in the guardrail where my washing had been clipped on… BIG lesson learned: always remove washing from the guard rail before a jibe, or stand to lose your pants!!

Continuing the washing theme; great fun is being had with the ’pegging’ game.

This consists of sneakily clipping pegs to unsuspecting members of crew clothing and counting the time taken before being discovered; a highly challenging and thought provoking game which has been taken to another level by Iona – pegging whilst the crew are asleep! Where next I wonder for this hilarious activity?

After two partially successful attempts at bread baking, Alan feels that he has cracked the problem of the bread mix not rising. He has found the perfect warm spot which has produced fantastic results; this just happens to be the middle of his bunk!

All on Challenger 2 (The boat that rocks) are happy and well and I send all my love to Saras, Charlotte, Victoria, Kaia, Amber and Taliah.

TTFN, Joe

Tuesday 5th December – Skipper’s Report

Breakfast : Spanish Omelette, Lunch : Hot Dogs, Dinner : Jambalaya
Fishing : Too fast to fish
Music: Eclectic selection of French songs

Some amazing fast downwind sailing on flattish moonlit seas. Last night we stayed on our Southerly gybe (225 COG True) to keep in the fresher winds and also to make best use of the forecast slight shift in wind angle which we should see today.

The wind is due to shift from the East to the East North East which will give us a nice Westerly course but we will struggle to make any South on it. So we banked our South last night, moving down to 13 59N.

Hopefully this should also see us remain in the slightly stronger wind.

The watermaker is off, and I am waiting to empty two aft tanks before we restart it. I will try and arrive at St Lucia with as much water in the tanks as possible – but also look at taking some weight off for the lighter patches of wind to come after Sunday.

All happy on Challenger 2. Alex was shocked and amazed that we gybed at night, I suppose it just shows how easy they/we have had it so far from a sailing perspective. We haven’t reefed (apart from when we lost the D1), only did a sail change to the Genoa many many days ago and have only really gybed a handful of times.

At the moment we are grinding down the miles, almost 10 per hour and every mile is in the right direction. The wind looks set to continue at least until Sunday and even ten it is just going to ease a bit but also go further North which will mean a more upwind angle for us and hopefully we will keep the speed.

Hoping all going well on Challenger 1 and BOB. Make sure the rum punch is cold when we arrive !

Kind regards

Ricky Chalmers, Skipper, Challenger 2

Posted by: First Class Sailing