As it turned out we weren’t quite done with rain yesterday after all. During the evening and night watches the wind steadily dropped and we were left meandering along in a front, completely enveloped by a pitch black Atlantic night save for the occasional flashes of lightning and distant thunder claps. My second watch was between 6 and 9am and as we came out on deck the other watch informed us that it had been lightly raining, and of course within a few minutes light rain had become something of a monsoon. The rain was fairly lashing down on Lancelot, pouring down the main sail and running off in never ending streams at the end of the boom.
We soldiered bravely on, alternating in pairs to take the helm, with one person helming and following a course while the other monitored wind speed and direction. I did the second job for Lia as the wind picked up and we fairly pelted across the ocean in a similar fashion to Thursday morning. Dawn seemed to take a long time in coming though and when it eventually did a grey and damp scene unsurprisingly greeted us. Changover with the next shift was a bit slower than usual given the complicated logistics of removing and exchanging very wet wet weather gear with them – poor souls. But we made up for it in the end by having a hot breakfast, sausage and baked beans out of a few tins, but after a night like that it tasted great!
Actually I haven’t mentioned the food yet, just realized! It has been very good and it is really only over the last couple of days that we are down to our tinned rations! I haven’t been roped into doing any cooking as we have two great cooks in Prue and Debs on board and I for one have been happy to steer clear of culinary logistics, mucking in on the washing and drying side.
The front passed and by early afternoon the sun was coming out and we were fairly clipping along on a good downwind tack having gybed at lunchtime. Unfortunately however around late afternoon we seemed to lose the wind and have spent the last few hours bobbing around doing the majestic speed of 0.00 knots! Jacko reckons it is the forecasted wind shift, moving from a south easterly to north easterly and paving, we hope, our way for a smooth run at St Lucia on the trade winds. We are still in first place in our racing division and now sixth overall in the racing class. So looking good.
As I write this on Friday evening at 8.30 we have 1388 nautical miles to go, which at our current speed would take 721 hours given we’re only moving at 2 knots! We need to get on those trade winds and benefit from wind speeds in the 15-20 knot range to get us to St Lucia for our ETA which is now sometime late next Friday early Saturday morning! I keep thinking we’re nearly there because it *looks* close on the radar map…!
No comments:
Post a Comment