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Skara Brae - night watch on Skara Brae




Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 00:28:19 GMT

well its arse oclock here in the Atlantic!

actually is it? the ships radio shows 00:30am and my ipad shows the same, but i thought we would have gained an hour by now (as we are heading west) - time will tell (if ye get the pun).
So after our adventures yesterday it is nice to have a quiet night - if you can call being on a roller coaster in the dark a quiet night!

but it quiet with respect to no more incidents - the winds dropped to 20-25kts, and our repairs held well with the boat keeping direction and speed at 5kts, but the seas didn't calm down - with breaking rollers ranging from 10ft to 15ft - which when they hit the boat from the side try to turn her, so the roller coaster becomes a dodgem - you can feel stuff hitting the boat but you don't anticipate it.

we are on 2 hour watches (the 4 boys) but we don't get much sleep with the constant banging and crashing from above,below and the side (waves hit the undercarriage of catamarans) - but we are making progress, we have logged nearly 1000 miles in the last 6 days, although only actually covered about 900 as the crow flies and the charts show 1966nm left, so we are 1/3 rd of the way there. At this rate it will be another 2 weeks before we get there.

We are also having some issues with our power management. We have a lot of thirsty electronics - Chartplotter, autolpilot, wind and speed gauges, ships radio, AIS, Sat phone, laptop (for email weather report (and 'Still Game'LOL)), then we have navigation lights and deck lights and galley lights and fridge and freezer. For the non-technical amongst you these all run on batteries that need charged - we would normally charge them with the solar panels during the day - then switch on an engine or the Genny to top them up at night, but due to the lovely weather there is no sun , so we are having to put the genny on every other shift - which obviously uses fuel - but again luckily we took some extra fuel so we still have enough to continue in this fashion for a few more weeks.

the biggest problem to moral is the last packet of fags got emptied today and the Scapa and Singleton malts are all done.
we do have some shit J&B -which is ok for a hot toady, but pretty naff as a wee snifter LOL
so it looks like we need to start looking at the cocktail cabinet if we want a night cap - I wonder if ye can make an Irish coffee with southern comfort!

Just got hit by a big rogue wave that spun me off my wee chart table seat (which swings!, and caused some loud crashing from the gally - with sounds of broken glass - so ids better wind up now and go check :-(

- it was nothing to worry about - just a wee glass broke in the drawer, even though they are cushioned by kitchen towels, so we are down to 4n glasses - never mind we have no whiskey left anyway LOL

so before i go ill give you a quick cap of what happens on a night watch:
get a coffee
check the course
check the wind speed and direction
put on waterprtoofs and lifejacket and harness
go check the sails are sitting good and not luffing or banging
check AIS for boats that are near
check radar for boats or squalls
check battery power and switch on genny if needed
check fuel
check water
more coffee
check sat email for any weather reports or emails from friendly boats ( we have contact with 3 other boats, Mystique, Ryme and Duplicat)
write a blog send it to shirley who will pass it onto facebook or send it dirtect to ARC site (need to check it gets there)
then repeat most of the above until its time to pass onto to next chap
anyway im at the last line coffee time
catch ye later
tom
Skara Brae
19N 27W
check sat



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