Frustrating night of heavy rain squalls, sudden high
winds on the front that would veer around us from East to East South East to
South sometimes so a full 90 degrees. For the night watches it means taking in
sail and resetting sail plans, sometimes foredeck work. Pat and I do single
watches at night and Pam and Craig together for a 1 hour longer watch – it’s odd
but it works. Each of us knows our limitations so on occasions we may need
additional assistance – if it can wait until the handover to do a more complex
sail change then it waits so there are extra pairs of hands but in the case of
squalls it has to be done immediately usually so it may mean ‘waking the off
watch’.
Working
the foredeck alone at night can be a little unnerving if you stop and think
about it (so you don’t dwell on it), the Atlantic is over 4km deep, so I wonder
how long my reading glasses took to reach the bottom then as I looked up to
check the mainsail was not chafing on the spreaders and they dropped off my head
overboard. The yacht is typically travelling at 8 to 9 knots over a choppy sea.
We often have over 160sqm of sail
up downwind and it generates a lot of power, the powered winches deal with this
so its not muscle that’s required but a choreograph of tasks that must be done
in a correct sequence. Often crew cannot hear from one end of the boat to the
other, especially in winds and squalls so a simple set of hand signals is now
used to ‘Winch in’, ‘Let-out’, ‘stop’. Power winches are great but its moving
machinery with the real potential to damage rig and people. A somewhat painful
reminder of this occurred yesterday when I was on the foredeck and we were
poling out the 80sqm Genoa foresail – during the sequence I was distracted by
something else going on on another sail and I did not ease out a downhaul sheet
in-sequence. It ripped (well fired) a cleat off the mast glancing me on its way
to the sea bed some 20 meters away and whiplashed the sheet (rope) I was
standing astride (only on the back of my leg – it could have been so much
worse), luckily I got away with bruising sufficient to remind me not to get
distracted again! So safety is key, medical and rescue support is likely to be
many hours away at best, on watch overnight, life jackets, MOB (Man Over Board)
indicators and Personal EPIRBS are carried.
Pat does
the daybreak shift and today Monday the winds ran out early in the morning and
we hit the wind hole I have been speaking about, earlier than planned. As the
sun rises everything changes – today its sunny – believe it or not we have not
seen that many sunny days since arriving in Las Palmas. Penalties or not the
engine is fired up and we set a track direct for a waypoint off the North end of
St Lucia. Crew catch up on lost overnight sleep, shower and read – its really
been a delightful day. Tonight, we will I think be under motor as we have had no
wind all day, this is likely to continue tomorrow so we are looking at getting
into St Lucia late Afternoon GMT (UTC), Local time is minus 4 hours (UTC) but
from experience of the Caribbean time does not quite have the same relevance and
may depend a bit on what they have been ‘smokin dat
day’.
Stuart