As I write this part of today’s blog I am half way through my watch and a beautiful crescent moon has just come up. Tonight, though, it is not the usual silver one which matches the millions of stars, but a deep gold coloured moon, and I have just seen a shooting star, the first for some time although I know if I looked long and hard enough I would see others. My beloved Southern Cross is also visible tonight.
Tonight’s watch has been magical in lots of ways. There is virtually no wind now and the goose-winged genoas are flapping so lethargically in the tiny breaths of air that the noise they create is barely audible over the hum of the one engine. Although this rather takes away the atmosphere, it is a necessary evil otherwise we would still be bobbing around in almost the same place tomorrow. The sea is flat calm and the phosphorescence is absolutely amazing. Stirred up by the passage of our hulls through the water, it sparkles like hundreds of fireworks, not just individual sparklers, but huge clumps of luminous green Roman candles.
There were other yachts just visible on the horizon earlier on my watch but they have now disappeared, leaving me to dance alone in the cockpit whenever the music on my MP3 player changes to something which I just can’t ignore. Happy moments indeed.
It actually seems no time at all until Jim appears at 5 am to take over. I go below and fall asleep immediately.
When I wake up it is to a completely different day. The sky is blue, there are little fluffy white clouds and all trace of grey has gone. There’s still bugger all wind but there is a strong current going in the right direction which helps a lot. We go for a while without the engines and with the current manage to get 5.5 knots of speed with only an average of 8.5 knots of wind. The current is about 2.5 knots so it makes a hell of a difference.
Jim cooks lunch again and it is on literally the last mouthful that a little bit of chilli or chilli oil manages to go down the wrong way and I am in immediate agony. My lungs feel like they are on fire and I cough and cough with tears streaming down my face. I can’t talk and can hardly breathe until Mike suggests I breathe through my nose instead which helps, and gradually the effects start to wear off. How unpleasant.
One more day and we should be at the equator, although we are definitely in the doldrums now. This strange phenomenon, (known nautically as the Inter-tropical Convergence Zone), is caused by two sets of wind patterns cancelling each other out, which basically leaves you with no wind, just the occasional thunderstorm, and by late afternoon, we can see some of those in the distance but they come to nothing.
We catch no fish today, we don’t even get a bite, and there are no dolphins, flying fish, birds (of the boat pooping variety or otherwise) at all. No ships either, apart from one big bugger which passed us around 9 am this morning.
With nothing to look at and a boiling hot cockpit, I am driven down to my cabin in the afternoon, which although still hot, is comfortable and I can have the fan on. There’s no chance of having the air conditioning on as we need all the diesel for the engines. I sleep and do Sudoku for a few hours and when I come back up on deck it is cooler, the tea is brewing and Jim has done the washing up. They are both obviously trying to make amends for the mess they created yesterday with their sandwiches, causing me to exclaim that I shared a boat with Beavis and Butthead aka Dirtbox and Pigpen (Dirtbox being Jim and Pigpen, Mike).
We have some more of our lovely mahi mahi for dinner, cooked in white wine with tomatoes, onions and garlic and some fresh bread dipped in. Mike finds some dried supplies which I had forgotten about but unfortunately we have run out of olive oil and sugar. I do need to sort out the provisioning when I get to Ecuador and provision store cupboard items almost to Australia. That will be some feat for someone who can normally only manage to shop for one week at a time but I can buy most things in Tahiti if I fail. It will just cost Mike a lot more and I am trying to keep the money for my pearl necklace!!
Our position at midnight is: 01 deg 39 min N, 81 deg 03 min W
Distance so far: 1797 nautical miles
Sounds like you had a magical night Jean.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could join you all in the South Pacific.... haven't ruled it out completely yet.
It snowed 3 inches here in Charleston for the first time in almost 15 years!! It was pretty and fun!