Just after midnight I have to wake Mike because a ship looks like it is heading straight for us. It ends up passing well to starboard thank goodness and he goes back for some more sleep.
It’s a night of big sea. The waves are huge but we skate over most of them, riding huge mountains of white foam. In the moonlight it looks amazing. Of course, the odd rogue wave has to ruin it by crashing over us or catching the boat at an odd angle and making the most God-awful noise, but for the most part it’s relatively peaceful.
He comes up a couple more times when noises wake him and at around 2 am he sends me down for yet another go at getting some sleep. This time, eventually, I drop off and sleep pretty solidly until 7.30 am. I call Mike and he crawls straight into bed while I am still dragging myself out.
The wind won’t take us directly where we want to go but keeps pushing us towards the shipping lane so Mike has set everything so we actually go further out of our way but well north of that line. We can correct the course at a later date.
It is grey and dismal when I first get up but by 9 am the cloud has all but disappeared and it is another hot day. I tidy up a bit then watch some TV.
Mike and I take turns sleeping (I manage another couple of hours around lunchtime) and the weather goes from cloudy to sunny and back to cloudy. In the afternoon I can see squalls all around on the horizon but they gradually dissipate without doing anything. Every couple of hours huge tankers and container ships pass us, always in the same direction – going east – but we do not see any other yachts at all.
We are sitting in the cockpit having a cup of tea when we suddenly spot a large, stripy snake casually swimming past us. This thing is about four feet long and definitely not what you expect to see passing you as far out to sea as you can get in this area. I jump off the seat and watch him go past us, making sure that he doesn’t jump aboard. We had one on board in the BVIs once – a little one – that was bad enough and I certainly don’t want one that size stowing himself away.
By 8 pm I am tucked up in bed and soon after, sound asleep.
Our position is: 10 deg 35 min S, 138 deg 54 min E
Distance so far: 11551 nautical miles
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