Oct 27 saw the first overnight sortie of the Trinity onboard Mhadei. Plan was to cast off around 1230 hrs and get back to Mandovi next morning around 10 AM. The team managed to finish all admin works and arrange for food, water and other supplies in time. By 1245 hrs we were out at sea. We decided to head west for a few miles before opening to South and continue with it through the night. We were expecting 4-7 kn of S-SW winds during the day veering to N-NE by the night. Sailed in pretty light winds in a broad reach making a Southerly headway but the headway seemed sluggish, hence took a call to put up the only genneker that we are left with at the moment, the A3 Genneker. Our mentor says that the day he doesn't have to come out to help us with sailing the boat and he can peacefully sit on his bunk and read his books for three consequtive days, he would know that we are ready. Well, he did get his book this time and we also tried our best to not disturb him with the boat's activities. Fortunately, he didnt as well come out very often except once or twice when he might have lost his resistance. Hopefully next time we sail, he regains his lost resistance!
Soon the evening grew into an almost full moon night. We planned to sail to a parallel course to Karwar and then head back around midnight. Sad that the winds started dropping from 6 kn to 5 to 4 to 3 even touching zero at times before midnight itself. Plan A of heading till Karwar was thus made to drop and Plan B was freshly formulated, which was to head back from a few miles north of Karwar so could make it back by the morning. Our belief in the forecasted winds was triggered when we came to standstill by around 1 am today. No and absolutely no winds. Main and fore sail flapping and we were only drifting endlessly. We then put off a reef to avoid riggings getting damaged. Then what! We could only wait for the winds to rise! Every watch tried to extract maximum of the these least of the winds that we were getting for our consolation. Finally around 2 am we got a 5kn breeze so we could at least steer at 3 kn. Caught little bit of sleep only after that. With barely any winds there was no chance of getting back by morning. At around 11 am winds dropped again and we had to again repeat the drill of latching up the sails , sit back and wait! Finally after lot of lpoitering around, we returned the boat pool around 1545 hrs. Not bad, eh?:D
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