24.11. - Olli in Flames

I woke up at 9:55 PM to Olli's loud monologue. ”This is fantastic. This is one of the most unbelievable experiences, an absolute all time high sailing experience. High and long waves, good wind, moonlight and lane to follow.”

Karri and myself took over the shift. The night was slightly warmer, the wind blew south and it turned a bit darker as soon as the moon disappeared around midnight. The 4-hour shift might be longer this time?

”This is absolutely my very best sailing experience, I can drive another hour!” Olli shouted when I woke up for the morning shift, which started with a steady breakfast at 6 AM. I thought of a groundhog day….?

Karri and I lined up and took over the morning shift. We had difficulties to remember what day it was, maybe Tuesday, we said with a smile. Just when we had one of the most interesting spinnaker operations ongoing, we saw a large flock of tuna about 50 metres from our boat, they had probably fun. Our sail operation did not have much of success, but however we were able to avoid major damages.

Our crew is divided into two teams; Hannu, Olli, Janne and Iiro are the A-team, and Hannu is the watch of this team. The B-team is Andrea, Francesco, Pasi and Karri, with Francesco as the watch. Alberto is ”il Capitano” and watching everyone. We are running five watches throughout the day, of which two last six hours and three last four hours. The daylight watches are from 6 AM to noon and from noon to 6 PM. The night watches are 6 PM to 10 PM, from 10 PM to 2 AM and from 2 AM to 6 AM.

The breakfast is served at 6 AM, lunch at noon and dinner at 6 PM.

So far the Italians have taken very good care of us, cultural and delicious food.

Pasi

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The second 24-hour drove us only 175 nautical miles. With slight frustration to the result and slowing speed between 6 and 8 knots, we decided to suggest that the Finnish team would hoist the spinnaker. With some seriousness in his voice, ”il Capitano” replied that this will put a lot of responsibility to the team, since the spinnaker is brand new, literally they were huge.

After the unsuccessful Italian-Finnish spinnaker operation resulting in a broken sail, I tried to sound as confident as possible, when replying ”No problem”.

We opted for going through the procedures several times without touching the spinnaker at all. When we finally did the process, the result was perfect. The spinnaker was beautifully up and we gained another 1.5 knots in our speed.

The spirits were at their top when we passed a 14-feet catamaran also running on a spinnaker.

We used this set-up until the dark came, but decided to change it to a butterfly set-up, using the Genoa supported by the boom.

Hannu