That's the AIS display screen on my VHF radio. Zoom in and you'll see a number of small circles with lines sticking out of them in the bottom left hand corner, a triangle in the middle and another small circle/line to the right of the triangle.
The group of circles/lines are the Injuns, or more accurately the leading pack of the ARC Europe fleet, also heading for Bermuda. These are the big fast boats. The ARC fleet left St Martin 2 days after us and the leading boats will probably overhaul us by the end of the day. The leader of the pack - Sea Dweller - is 3.5 miles behind us as at 1315 on 16/5 and probably averaging a knot faster. She has her Spinnaker set whereas I reluctantly doused Bonny's cruising chute, when at 2300 last night, my alarm woke me and I discovered that unlike an hour earlier when any remotely fit tortoise would have overtaken us, we were creaming along at 5 knots with the genoa also set and poled out to Starboard.
Such a shame the sea was flat and it was great sailing under the stars but we were right on the end of the 'sensible' scale. Dark, rising wind, solo! Every ounce of common sense screamed, "get that bloody thing down NOW before we broach. I listened, decided to leave it for another hour - it was such fun, besides I was tired - and then I immediately changed my mind and reluctantly set about the task of wrestling hundreds of square feet of billowing nylon down on to the deck. I switched the deck light on and donned safety harness and a head torch grabbed the fall end of the very long clew line having left a couple of turns round the winch to provide enough friction to hold the sail without me being pulled overboard and went up on the foredeck. "Oh fuck, it's even windier than I thought!". I rehearsed the drill... Untie the sock downhaul from the mast, move to the front of the foredeck holding on the safety spinnaker pole, pull on the sock downhaul to smother the billowing sail, move back to the mast, tie off the sock downhaul, lower the sock containing the chute to the deck. "Piece of piss" I said. Someone else said, "but look at that fucking sail, its enormous and I'm sure it's even windier than a couple of minutes ago". "So what do you suggest wise arse?" No response. Deep breath. And do you know what? To my great surprise it was a piece of piss!
An hour later I'd replaced the chute with the poled out jib hanked on to the second forestay. A check on the speed. 6 knots with less than half the sail area earlier. Glad I didn't wait any longer! Mind you an hour later the wind had dropped and the sea was up and we were flopping around at 2 knots heading the wrong way.
Meanwhile the other Tortoise, Titti4 was showing on the AIS as about 5 miles off to Starboard, seemingly maintaining station.
Long before all that kicked off, before it was even dark, whilst we were motoring, I was in the galley preparing dinner of spaghetti and tinned meatballs when I looked out the window and saw a strange slick on the surface of the sea next to the boat. Whales? I went up to investigate. Nope. The bloody boat was going round and round in circles and the 'failing to maintain course alarm' was beeping. What the f*** is going on I thought. "Shit, I hope the rudder hasn't fallen off, or the steering rods broken." An hour later, after trying to convince myself I had just accidentally switched the auto steering off - which I hadn't - through a wave of mounting panic, I managed to work out through a process of elimination that the rudder was intact afterall and the boat's steering gear fully operational. Also the auto steering responded to changes of course being input, but it wouldn't hold the course. Rather relieved that we weren't rudderless in the 'middle' of the Atlantic, I reasoned that it must be a fault of some sort with the system compass. I decided to wait for the wind then sail so that the steering could be left to the Hydrovane.
Next, I called up my fellow tortoise, Titti4, on the VHF to appraise them of the situation and left a WhatsApp message for Mick before shutting down Starlink for the night. After putting the engine in nuetral I noticed there was already a slight breeze from the south (ish) and so set about making sail. An hour later we were slipping along at 2 knots a couple of hours before my 2300 Alarm went off.
Next priority was to rescue dinner! The pasta was still warm so I re-heated the tinned meatballs, chucked in some tomatoe puree to get rid of their decidely anaemic looking appearance and tucked in and then went to bed.
I've already mentioned the first time my beauty sleep was disrupted. The second came at around 0530, when I decided that the persisting SW wind had pushed Bonny as far East as was desirable, so requiring yet another sail change. Down came the poled out jib to port. Next I had to ship the pole holding the Genoa out to Starboard, harden in on the genoa then head NW, then hoist the mainsail and head roughly north.
A couple of hours later the wind shifted again, forcing us East - again. The previous rig was now the perfect one, but I just couldn't be assed to start all over again. Instead I poled out the genoa to port where the jib had been, put the now southerly wind behind us and eased the main right out to starboard with a preventer to reduce the risk of an acidental gybe. With the wind gradually increasing, that's been our rig ever since (as at 1600). It's set to continue and so I'll probably have to reef before dark.
Meanwhile, the leading Injuns are snapping at our heals. It turns out the "Sea Dweller", now less than a mile behind us, is a 16 metre Catermaran! So she's longer than Bonny and (in theory anyway) capable of planing. I'm therefore surprised she's only making a knot to a knot and a half faster than Bonny. She ain't no 'Hare', that's for sure! She is however sporting one of those fancy chutes (not a spimmaker as I alleged before) with a slit across it, partly filled by a sort of horizontal sock. A "parasail" I think it's called...
1745 here and the wind has just started to noticeably increase, so two reefs just gone in the main and a couple of rolls in the genoa.
191 miles to go. ETA Saturday morning.
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