Voahangy - Day 13 - High speed and night watches
What a ride! With tradewinds increasing in strength, so has the boat speed reaching 15kt a couple of times, when picked up by waves. The four of us stood in awe, Terry wishing we'd keep surfing for ever, but as thrilling as it was, I was happy to cruise at 9kts! This seems to be the speed the boat settles in 20-25kts winds. Skipper thinks we should go faster, but I remind him that this baby weighs 32 tons and carries an entire household and hardware store. So far the trip has been very comfortable, and if going slower is the penalty, then we're happy to pay it.
I must say that what feels thrilling in broad daylight, is down right scary at night: with virtually no moon during most of the crossing so far, we've had to rely on radar and wind instruments for "vision". As we approach the Caribbean, there seems to be more and more squalls, and these occur mostly at night. All we see of them is the red patch on the radar, the wind indicator tells us the speed and the direction of the wind, so we adjust the autopilot to steer with the wind and "go blind". We just feel the waves, we don't see them, and believe me , there is nothing more spooky than feeling the boat being lifted by a wave, going over its crest and surfing down its face at 15kts in the dark!! That's the bad part about night watches. On the other hand, it sure keeps you alert, on par with monitoring other boats showing up on radar. Which brings me to our watch system, if you can call it that way. The standard pattern 4 hours on-4 hours off does not work for us as it doesn't allow us enough sleep (certainly not me at least!). We prefer to split the night in half: I generally take the evening slot after dinner (say 9pm to 3am) while Terry does the morning watch (3am to 9am). At least we get a decent sleep and if we feel tired during the day, we have a small nap while Marc is put in charge. It's a fairly loose arrangement which sometimes comes undone when one of us (mostly me) gets sick, or weather conditions are such that all hands on deck are required; but it works for us and we always make it happy and safe (even if a little bleary eyed!)
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