Cape Town to St Helena

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16 – 24 Jan Ct to ST

A good trip to St Helena, mostly great conditions and mostly sailing wing and wing. A few highlights included seeing a whale on our first night out, only about 40m from the boat as we were having sundowners. He was very close on the pt side. Then about 15mins later, we saw him again, this time off the stb bow. An event filled day on the 18^th – we had dragged some debris that was stuck in our rudder and all was fine, it wasn’t affecting our steering or anything, so all was fine...until we changed tack. Then it must have moved in the rudder and suddenly our steering was very heavy. The electric auto helm couldn’t handle it. We tried moving it under motor, back and forward, but to no avail. In the end Phil actually jumped overboard (tied on with a rope, life vest, and many other precautions) to have a look. He saw where it was, but couldn’t do anything about it as it was too far under the boat and the waves and come up. Back on board we figured that it would eventually wear itself out. The windvane steering could handle the extra heavy helm. By the next day, it had indeed worn through. In the meantime however, back when we were preparing for Phil to go overboard, we accidently jybed, broke a fixture on the traveller and also 2 cars that attach the mainsail to the mast. To fix all of these and go overboard took up 3 hrs. What a day!!! The next day we celebrated my birthday with hotdogs for lunch, and lasagne and chocolate mousse for dinner. Boomerang had given Phil a present to give me that morning which was lovely and I got a necklace from Phil. On the 21^st we crossed the Greenwich Meridian. Arrived St Helena on 24^th.

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