What a difference a day makes!
My watch is uneventful although the sea continues to be unpleasant, although thankfully not quite as unpleasant as yesterday. I go off watch at 4 am and am awake again around 7.30 am, confused as to why I haven’t done two watches, before remembering that my kind husband did one of them for me.
When I look out of the window I can see that yesterday’s grey has been replaced by blue all around. The sea is still a little bit lumpy and rolly but it always takes time for the sea to calm down after strong winds.
By 10 am we are having a lovely sail. There is not a cloud in the sky and the waves are evenly spaced and smooth. OK, we get the occasional one which hits the boat weirdly and makes a crashing noise underneath (which still can make me jump out of my skin), but after the last two days, today is bliss. Physically I feel much better too although my stomach is still giving me some jip.
I talk to some of the other boats around us on the VHF, intruding into this normally male province but none of them seem to mind although they talk less about nautical things to me than they do to Mike – I wonder why?
I am very happy today. The humidity seems down and neither of us feel the least bit sweaty which is wonderful. The boat even stays dry all day and we are able to open up the hatches to get some nice fresh air flowing through. This is presumably because we are now south enough to be in the Trade Winds rather than the equatorial region. I find that just one of the plantains that Mike bought instead of bananas is ripe. Cut up, fried and eaten hot, it is delicious as a mid morning snack.
While Mike is doing today’s position report, I put on rubber gloves and go and inspect the boat. The deck and trampolines look like a marine version of the Battle of the Somme. Dead bodies are everywhere, mainly squid and flying fish, which have been thrown across the boat in the waves from yesterday’s high seas. There’s even one little body lying on top of the bimini – it must have been some wave which deposited him there! The flying fish are not a problem. Suffering the effects of rigor mortis, you pick them up by a wing and they point stiffly away from you as you drop them over the side. The squid, however, are not so easily dealt with. Their squishy little bodies get baked onto the surface of the boat. When you attempt to pull them free, they break apart and usually some body part is left adhered to the deck, sometimes the whole head, sometimes a couple of tentacles, or, more revoltingly, sometimes a big, black eye which stares at you reproachfully, as if you are the reason for its demise. Hence the rubber gloves. All very gross.
I cook marinated beef strips for lunch and add them hot to a salad, having decided that one meal of plain white rice is enough, and as my stomach will probably react negatively to anything I put inside it, it may as well react to something I at least enjoyed eating.
Mike tries a new lure on the rod then goes for a nap. He’s only been gone twenty minutes or so when the line screams out and I put the clutch on it and go and wake him. As I get to his cabin, I can hear even more line going, and race back to tighten the clutch even more. By the time Mike gets out into the cockpit, nearly all the line is out and Mike starts pulling it back in. Suddenly the line goes slack and when it is all pulled in, there is no fish on the end, nor lure. Whatever we caught has bitten through the line and taken off the lure and the two feet of wire that attached it to the line. What WAS that? Mike puts another wire and lure on and goes back to bed. This fishing lark is expensive.
Towards the early evening the wind starts to pick up and just as we are about to begin the watches, a squall passes and although the wind does not increase, there is a lot of rain in it. The boat gets a thorough wash down but unfortunately so does Mike as he fails to get his waterproof gear on quickly enough. I am on two watches tonight but Mike decides to stay up as well for the early part of mine to keep an eye on the weather but the wind doesn’t go above 18 knots.
I sit and watch the old film “Nightmare on Elm Street” and can’t believe how cheesy it now seems. This terrified me when it first came out.
Our position is: 04 deg 30 min S, 102 deg 03 min W
Distance so far: 3357 nautical miles
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