Thursday, 4th November 2010 (Day 6 at Sea)
00.00hrs We are crossing the Mozambique channel, just SW of Madagascar. The wind is blowing 35/40 knots from the E and the seas are very, very rough, however we are scooting along at 9 to 10 knots. Down below, things are flying in all directions, cups, glasses bottles are rattling around in the presses despite all the tea towels stuffed around them. We are rattling ourselves, and the beautiful A Lady is shuddering under the pressure of it all. Neil and Skipper are on deck, and there are gale warnings flying in all directions to match everything else.
We even had to venture into the Lazarette to secure the diving bottle, which had broken free of its straps, and was banging all over the place........... This is an interesting night, like hang onto your knickers.
The weather continued all night, so sleeping was disturbed and short lived.
07.00hrs We spoke to Wild Tigris on VHF, the interesting thing about this was not the conversation, but the fact that they were 61 miles away, normally we can only get a range of 30 miles at max. on this radio.
09.00hrs Radio Call:- Drammer was the radio net controller for today. Hans and Emmy sail this boat, mostly on their own, but they have a superb radio system, and often pass messages from one boat to another.
11.30hrs The wind has moderated big time, and the seas are have subsided , the sun is shining and it is very hot, just beautiful conditions again, so we shook out the reefs, and we get the "Bag of Fear" flying once more. We covered 200 miles in the last 24hrs, which is great going.
Lunch time. We just had a snack of cheese and biscuits, plus some of the different varieties of tea from Mauritius. all in beautiful conditions. To think a few hours ago we were wishing we could pick up the boat and go somewhere else.
We cleared out the Lazarette and checked all our steering gear and while we were there, had a look at the rudder gland, sure enough, it was leaking, so we refilled the grease thing and squeezed in plenty of it to the gland, and after a few seconds, the water stopped dripping, success................
15.00hrs The wind shifted more into the north and we were unable to maintain our course to Richards Bay, so we had to drop the "Bag of Fear" on deck, and set the Yankee and staysail (the 2 headsails. The Yankee being the big one).
Our friend Ingrid from Germany confirmed the other three Islands that are bigger than Madagascar. No.1 Greenland, No.2 Indonesia, and No.3 is Borneo,,, that our schooling for today, well done Ingrid for that. We had lots of emails, Skippers brother Rom sent (as usual) a very entertaining one about an Aerlingus flight from London to Cork last friday. We also heard from Arnaud, Lorna, Ciao, Margaret How, Michelle, Seun of "Liberty at Sea", Dermot, Alfred and others.
We still have not heard from Fats in ages, we must have insulted him, but he is giving an after dinner talk next Sat night 6th in the RCYC about his experiences on A Lady for six months.
17.00hrs We have traveled 919 n miles so far on this trip, with a complete mixture of weather. The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly.
18.00hrs We ran out of wind, so we raved up the engine and motor sailed, no sooner had we got going, but we passed a pod of Whales, we identified them as Blue whales and they were close to us, about 150m off our port side.
Dinner was slow cooked belly pork and crackling, plus chicken drumsticks, plus baked beans, plus creamed spuds,
and lorry loads of butter, just to make sure the cholesterol gets a good feeding....................
23.00hrs The wind picked up again, so off with the "Iron Sail" and we scooted along once more under sail, happy out.
Aileen did the 10 to 00 watch, followed by skipper on the 00 to 02 watch, followed by Neil, then Terry, and finally
on the 06 to 08 watch, Colette.
That's all for today,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (Skipper)