It has been an interesting week for those ashore as we watched the tracker and tried to work out why the boats went in the direction they went and what has happened when one seems to be going nowhere while others are flying along.
This photo explains a lot of why Kiss has been going slower than we expected her to. Last night the boys pulled into Coffs harbour to effect some repairs. This tear occurred on the first day when they slammed into a wave and the spinnaker pole came off the mast (taking the track with it) and punched through the bottom of the Main. Fortunately it was below the line of the first reef and the rest of the sail was protected by keeping the reef in until now.
Tony had been puzzled as to why Kiss had reacted in an almost pitch pole manner when they went into the back of the wave and the mystery was solved when they checked the new forward watertight bulkhead. It was watertight alright! However it was full of water! Obviously with all the “on the nose” weather the bowsprit was the culprit.
Of course that was not the only problems they had but the auto helm was sorted out with some ingenuity on Tony’s part and I believe the cutting board in the galley is now missing a piece.
Andy does not say much so I don’t want you to think that he is being ignored, he has had to deal with a torn bear suit right from the first day and I hope he has sewn it up or used some sticky back maybe to ensure waterproofing. Andy is required to send the emails as Tony’s dyslexia makes it very difficult for him to write long and involved missives. Andy has to work out the Chart Plotter when it goes haywire which it has a couple of times. New technology is not one of Tony’s favourite things. They have changed the log en route, that seems to have fixed many of their intermittent network problems. I am sure they still have the grins they had on day one.
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I update several times daily posting pictures of the tracker from my iphone.
Stay tuned…














