Tuesday 1 December 2015

Alpaire day 8

Well we have news, some important price sensitive information for a public company. You are warned, it may affect the share price! More of that later.

Conditions are lovely except for the wind which is a bit light at 6 to 8 knots. That is entirely as forecasted for the main areas where our fleet are. We are now making our dash South. The wind is forecasted to gradually increase over the next 48 hours. Our 24 hour distance made good to St Lucia was 127 Miles. That looks great compared with most of the fleet. For example; Taistealai, skippered by Chris Tibbs, a meterologist who advises professionally on routing etc and is lying second, made 111 miles to the good. Maybe we were lucky. We concentrated on boat speed. It must be in approximately the right direction. However we are North of Chris and most of the fleet, so hence the need to get South.

This morning we unveiled our secret weapon, never used before, an asymmetric spinnaker on a roller. That has given us extra speed. When we get into the grove we can occasionally manage 7 knots on a true wind of 9 to 10 knots. It is all about getting the apparent wind to work for us. Every now and again a wave swings the stern and we lose the apparent wind effect. Our average is better than six knots with this rig in 9 to 10 knots of wind. The success of our routing strategy all depends on whether or not the others are getting a better angle towards St Lucia.  

The orcas, marlins and wahoos have been very aggresive. With two more strikes they took the bait and snapped the wire, twice! That also proves that we don't have a problem with knots. Then shortly after 10am, before the night watch were fully awake, we caught a dorado. Congratulations to Sam and Des. We will bring back the photos to prove it. The dorado was a beautiful golden colour when it was in the water. Hence the name, from gold (in Spanish ?). I understand that it is also called Mahi Mahi. Our speed at the time was 3.5 knots. This gave Des the chance to use the gaff to land the fish. He has been wanting to use that for a number of years now. Hard cheese for the Dorado!  Then we applied the Larious London Dry Gin to each gill. Now I know the origin of the expression full to the gills. Sam cooked it on the skillet for lunch and served it with a fine Spanish white (Rioja) and a slice of lemon.

I can now reveal the price sensitive information to the faithful followers of Alpaire's progress. The dorado was caught on an artificial lure fashioned from the yellow part of a Morrison's super market bag. I described this previously as an El Corte Ingles shopping bag, in case any spies or the CIA were tuned in of course.

We have two further strategies for fishing. I will consider revealing all tomorrow , if I have space. In the meantime keep an eye on the share price of the major pharma companies.


All well on Alpaire as we sail SW in a gentle breeze and a calm sea. 

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