Cleone - CLEONE Leg 17 Day 8 - Pass the Dictionary, Please

Houston, we have a problem.

 

"I should put on your waterproof pants; the weather sucks" said the kindly American voice that woke me up at two fifty am.  And whilst I was puzzling these two curious statements, Alex added "Your tea is in the sink".  These three statements left me with four immediate problems, and one longer-term one.  As far as I recall I have not worn waterproof pants since I gave up wearing nappies over - well a long time ago.  Two, how can the weather suck - wind blows, rain falls, snow drifts.  Three it was only yesterday that Alex said accusingly "I don't understand you Brits, you personify everything", and four, why had he put my tea in the sink and not in the usual mug?

 

I got up anyway.  Peering up into the dark cockpit between the rain spattered wash-boards, I gathered it was raining hard, and had been for most of the past 3 hours.  I put on my waterproof trousers, jacket (yes, bright yellow is today's black) and life-jacket, collected my hot mug of tea from where it had been safely parked in the sink and heaved myself neatly into the cockpit, clipping on to the safety line as I did so.  Alex was glad to be going off-watch; the only bright spot for me was that Norfy had managed to unearth a packet of gingernuts from the chaos of his cabin - I wolfed two down with my tea.  So ;ast night, Alex sat in the rain for three hours, I stood in the rain for three hours, Norfy sat in the rain for three hours, and now Alex is back sitting in the rain again.  Bruce reckons that the low, which is now more coherent, is nevertheless not going to develop into a full-blow tropical cyclone, but he continues to watch it carefully for us.  Meanwhile, well to the south of its centre, the low continues to dump copious quanties of rain on us, lashed by winds on occasions of over thirty knots (these come in pulses, rather than gusts).  Cleone is reefed down securely, with two reefs in the Genoa, three in the main and two in the mizzen.  She rides the seas sedately, but every so often a rogue wave throws her around, and we corkscrew down into a trough and then back up again.  We are still up with the fleet and making nearly seven knots.  Today's total is another 166 miles; it may be wet, but it's great sailing.

 

The weather sucks.  True, but I really don't understand Americans - I thought it was Monica.