Our position at 1300 GMT on Friday 18th is 32d24N 35d23W.
This position puts us right in the middle of the creation point of Atlantic tropical depressions and storms. All around us great towering cumulus clouds gather strength and create huge air movements and torrents of rain. Our wind speed varies from 15 to 25 knots in seconds. Each mini-system is individually hand-crafted and sent majestically off onto the western horizon. Some may coalesce and pick up energy from the warming sea as they travel towards the Caribbean. This, after all, is the start of the tropical hurricane season, and the reason we are making a timely exit eastwards.
Now we are getting used to this ocean passage thingy, we have finally got ourselves into some routines. Our formal 3 hour watch-keeping roster covers the night hours only, starting at 2100. The first person on alternates nightly, so that we stagger our sleep patterns, and this seems to work well. Only half the day is now spent in tired irritable bickering. The other half is spent dozing, mumbling, and dribbling.
Our only long distance comms is by an old ICOM 710 HF Marine SSB radio. This can be used for normal voice via a microphone, or as a data transmitter using a Pactor digital Modem and a Netbook computer. For the digital service we pay an annual subscription to an Association which runs several receiving stations round the world. These stations post and receive our e-traffic on/off the internet e-mail system. E-mail can only be passed slowly by SSB radio and even short ones take a long time if reception is poor. Because of the time and power taken its often necessary to run the engine as well.
With long established north-easterlies we have been battling along on Port tack now for over a week. This is awkward and means that everything onboard gradually drifts in one direction. Water finds its way into lockers that have been dry for years and once-tidy shelves and cupboards become chaotic. David is offering cheap left leg shortening operations if this continues.
Whatever the conditions, we always have our main meal sitting at the saloon table, but cooking and eating at extreme angles, as in squalls, can be very testing, requiring heroic balancing acts and great ingenuity in the use of such things as wedges and rubber mats. Clean clothes don't stay that way for long.
Monty Monitor, the servo windvane, has been hard at work for 3 days and, as long as the boat is balanced properly, is an amazing machine in operation and to watch. Under the Monitor, we closely follow the twists and shifts of the wind, rather than a compass course, and therefore wind forecasts need to be taken account of in our navigation. Using the monitor also means the engine needs only be run for half the time. An odd downside of this is that the fridge gets charged less often.
David has made a chunky fishing rod using a pipe and a big reel and a length of bungee to tether it to a winch. With it we are using a strange yellow heavy lure thing. Our handline is trailed to stbd and the rod line to port. On Thursday night, waves caused us to heave-to twice and turn 360 so that both lines became terminally tangled. One line is now covered in alien goo, the result of a nocturnal knock-up with a PMOW. The goo produces instant rashes, and the line is now quarantined.
On Wednesday and Thursday, David tried his hand at two Ciabetta loaves. Although both were aesthetically pleasant neither was edible by humans and they have now been donated to science as the highest density material known to man.
Last night, we had a big black sky with the mighty arc of the MW above us. Huge plumes of phosphorescence stream aft into the blackness and all the star stars have come out to play.
Our position at 1300 on Friday 18th is 32d24N 35d23W. We are well reefed down, making about 5.5 knots Easterly in big boisterous seas and are about 540 miles SSW of the Azores. We are awaiting a slight wind shift which may make it favourable for us to tack to the North. We think we will stop at Horta (poss 23rd or 24th) on the small island of Faial to reprovision and prepare ourselves for the 1200 mile Atlantic flog to SW Ireland.
M & D on R
No comments:
Post a Comment