What a difference a day makes … and the difference is … the bloody weather! About an hour before I get up for my night watch, everything changes. The sea has been a bit uncomfortable but now we have wall to wall squalls as well. I watch as bright yellow blobs appear all over the radar screen, one after another, most of them bringing rain, sometimes torrential.
Photo: Sunrise – not that you’d know it
Water, when it is this consistent and heavy, will always find its way in somewhere. At least we know the usual suspects and my laundry basket comes in handy to catch the drips that find their way through the companionway hatch.
Photo: An exhausted bird comes to rest for a while
The wind, moderate though it may be, continues to come at us from an unhelpful direction and we find ourselves once more pitching straight into the waves rather than going with them. I put my arm out to save myself one too many times and catch myself awkwardly, not doing any major damage but wrenching it enough to cause me discomfort for the next couple of days. Mike does the same thing. You just can’t help it when you are constantly thrown around. My seasickness returns in the form of the near constant headache although I do feel a bit nauseous and take a tablet just in case. We may as well be in the Indian Ocean again, although the seas aren’t any where near as high.
Mike takes the main down while I sleep during the morning. It is just flapping around, banging from side to side and not doing any good. It is in these conditions that the batons work their way out and neither of us wants to go outside to retrieve a wayward one in weather like this. Two worked their way out of Crazy Horse’s sail yesterday.
The weather continues like this all day and with the main down, we go from motor sailing to just motoring and already I am panicking about the diesel. However, the weather forecasts only predict this for another 36 hours or so then the wind should turn.
In the late afternoon, I am once again promoted to chief bucket holder. The satellite phone that we stand in the bucket when sending our e-mails is in grave danger of taking a flying leap off the cockpit table and I have to sit outside and hold it in place. I go out naked to sit on the soaking cold and wet cockpit cushions – there’s no need to get any clothes wet as with 85% humidity inside the boat, getting anything dry is impossible.
Mike notices that during the afternoon, we crossed the equator and entered the northern hemisphere for the first time in a year. Amazingly the weather is even worse than then. At least when we did it the first time with Jim (and doesn’t that seem an absolute age ago?) it was grey but not actually raining. We don’t even bother celebrating this time although if we had had some champagne I’m sure we would have used it as an excuse to break our ‘no alcohol on passage’ rule.
I talk to Jutta on our informal net and can hear Rosemary although she can’t hear me. Both are fed up with the weather, especially Jutta who is a real sun bird.
We are about a quarter of the way to Grenada and already it looks like our desire to be there in under two weeks is under threat. If it continues like this, 17 days could be more realistic. With this in mind I head off to bed to get thrown around there. You wouldn’t believe how you can be bounced around in your own bed – and still get off to sleep - eventually!!
Our position is: 00 deg 27 min N, 39 deg 06 min W
Distance so far: 23023 nautical miles
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