Its been a tough past 24 hours, with winds through Friday night climbing to low 20 with persistant rain. On Sat morning we decided to rig our third reef whilst we had reasonable conditions, swapping reef 1 for the third, and quartering the sail area. This turned out to be v. sensible move as the winds picked up through Saturday morning, rain intensified, and we then hit a very severe squall line moving north-east up the Atlantic. Our max wind measurement was 42 knots, and we had about 20 minutes in the high 30s. Lightening was flashing around us (no strikes, although we disconnected the SSB just in case), and the sea state changed, with the peaks of the chop over the 4 - 5m swell being blown off into a spray by the strong wind, and beaten down by the rain, visibility was very minimal!! We turned downwind onto a broad reach, furled the gennie completely and rode it out without too much damage, although our ARC number tied to our starboard side has been shredded, and our appetites virtually disappeared for the day :/ We woke this morning though to bright sun, the weather maps coming through from our great support team in Sydney show the trade winds re-establishing from Tuesday this week, so we're hopeful that the worst of the conditions is behind us!!
Nature notes: not much to report, we're seeing flying fish quite regularly, I hadn't realised they don't just leap out of the water and flap a bit, they are skilful pilots with some soaring wave crests with every bit as much skill as a bird, to maximise their time aloft and distance flown out of harms way. I think the boat gives them a fright so they go into flight mode! We're seeing phosphorescence (sp?) in our wake, with quite bright flashes under water from something larger, not sure what that is. And birds this far out also, we're many hundreds of miles from land now, and we're seeing both lone birds skimming the water and diving on food, and also larger soaring birds in what are clearly couples, using the waves and wind to minimise flapping. We're presuming all these guys go back to land for breeding etc, so they clearly clock up some impressive mileage, and presumably sleep on the water (we scare the odd one into flight as we approach at night also...). Fishing lines back out today, fingers crossed!!
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