Trucial Coast, Day 5 - flying the Parasailor
Andrew Hunt November 29th, 2007
Good morning all from Mercator Squared - this is a phrase I’ve come up with to describe being as far north of the equator as you are west of the Greenwich Meridian, a position we passed through a few minutes ago.It’s not a common sailing phrase, and it probably doesn’t seem that exciting, but we are 500 miles from the nearest land, we haven’t got Sky TV and I couldn’t bring my Playstation because it devours too much battery power. So you take your thrills where you can get them! I was unable to write the log yesterday as we were doing yachty things. Namely rigging and hoisting the Parasailor. It struck me last night that I’ve been merrily throwing sailing terms around in this log, but that many of you reading this won’t be familiar with them - so at the risk of being patronising to those of you who do sail, I’ll explain as I go along…
A Parasailor is a huge (150+ square metres) sail made of extremely light material, very similar to a spinnaker, and flown off the front of the boat. The cool innovation is that halfway up the sail is a slot with what is very like a parachute foil suspended in it. This gives the sail lift, helping it to keep its shape and lifting the bow of the boat out of the water, preventing it from submarining as can happen with a spinnaker. We popped it up for a couple of hours and then dropped it again. We reached south through the night (a reach is normally the fastest point of sailing for a boat and broadly speaking it means the wind is coming side on to you). We want to get south quickly now as there is an area of very light winds gradually working south behind us and we want to be in the Trades and escaping from them soon. Currently we’re gently running (sailing directly in front of the wind) goosewinged (the two principal sails out on either side of the boat) with the genoa (large sail at the front of the boat) on a pole - this prevents the sail from collapsing too much in light winds. We’ve only got a Force 3 behind us but we’re ticking over at 5.5 knots. I thought a quick interpretation of the Beaufort Scale might be illuminating and give you some idea what we’re experiencing. So:
- Force 1-3 (1-10 knots of wind): We’re basically drifting, or making very gentle progress.
- Force 4-5 (11-21 knots of wind): Nice sailing!
- Force 6-7 (21-33 knots of wind): Exciting stuff, hold on and put on some waterproofs!
- Force 8 (34-40 knots): Yelp!
- Force 9-12 (41+ knots): For those in peril on the sea…..
We’re settling into our routines now, and we now have the odd bit of spare time. Sealegs are kicked in now, so I may try and do some reading. I need to relinquish the laptop to the skipper now and let him get weather forecasts and other such useful stuff. But stay tuned! Tomorrow I’ll give exciting details on how to sleep in a yacht that’s heeling at 25 degrees….
- General , Sail Race ARC , Staff Travels
- Comments(2)
We’re glad you had more luck with the Parasailor.
Ours was useless baggage all the way across the atlantic.
http://www.helenmarygee.co.uk/2007/11/26/the-parasail-parasailor-2/
and more musings about the Parasailor here:
http://www.helenmarygee.co.uk/2007/12/20/atlantic-crossing/
Happy sailing
Paul and Helen
Hi Paul & Helen - nice to hear from you! To be honest, once we’d broached at 3am in 30 kts with the parasailor still flying and subsequently seen it chafe its way through the guy and flog itself into pieces on the forestay, it became nothing more than a very expensive beanbag for relaxing on the foredeck! If you do see Thomas again, I’m sure Rob has a long list of things he’d like to add to whatever you have to say to him….