Although I am supposed to be on watch at midnight, I still haven’t got to sleep at this point so Mike stays on watch until nearly 3 am which allows me eventually to drift off for a couple of hours. When I take over, I watch the end of a film but feel so sick looking at the screen than I give up and lie down in the salon, setting the alarm clock every twenty minutes to check the instruments and look outside.
Mike comes back on watch at 6.45 am and I go back to bed, groaning about feeling sick although Mike assures me that I won’t be, and gets me a seasick tablet. Half an hour later I rush past him (having checked which direction the wind is blowing) as I can feel my second cup of tea making its reappearance. Mike screams at me to get my life jacket on but it’s too late and I’m not going back for it. I stand in the deepest part of the back of the cockpit, naked, heaving my guts over the side in the pouring rain, as we are now in the middle of a squall, and it’s bloody cold. Immediately it’s over, I retreat back into the covered part of the cockpit and call for the bucket, just in time too, as then my first cup of tea also reappears. Lovely. How ladylike. How elegant. Just another glamorous side of sailing. Oh how I loathe vomiting!!
Amazingly I recover quite quickly after that and eat some breakfast (although I don’t fancy a cup of tea just yet). Then Samantha starts bleeping. Samantha is our autopilot and she bleeps from the instrument panel in the cockpit whenever the wind changes direction beyond a certain range, and she keeps bleeping until you press a button to say you have acknowledged this change. Today, the winds are all over the place, and as we are set to steer to the wind, she keeps up this bleeping the whole bloody day. By the end of the morning I am swearing at her; by the end of the day, I want to smash her little dial face in.
In the afternoon, I actually manage to fall asleep for a few hours and emerge feeling quite refreshed. We are making good time and romping along at over 8 knots even after we have put two reefs in the main sail ready for the night sail. As I sit in the cockpit watching the stars gradually appear, I even drink a cup of tea – and it stays down!
Photo: Drinking tea and not a bucket in sight
We eat an easy dinner of steak and mashed potato and watch a film. Again, frustratingly, it takes me ages to get to sleep (probably because I had the afternoon sleep - you just can’t win) but I do manage a little bit before Mike wakes me around midnight.
Our position is: 19 deg 05 min S, 156 deg 06 min W
Distance so far: 7152 nautical miles
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