Rafiki - Consolations of being becalmed

Friday 7th December 2012

Cally writes:

Last night Andy managed to steer us round the edge of the lightning
and we escaped major squalls, while Phil had a couple of patches of no
wind at all. It was unbearably hot. There was lots of bed swapping,
as the kids sought out any airy bit of the boat they could find.

Initially the morning loomed remarkably grey. We all felt
heavy-headed and soporific. Towards mid-morning there were heavy rain
showers and it was wonderfully refreshing to take to the foredeck and
get hosed down by them! The sea is relatively flat and calm and so
you can see for miles across the horizon. We’ve also continued to
have a small harvest of flying fish each day on the deck – we assume
they are leaping out of the water to avoid being eaten, oblivious to
Rafiki being in their path. They are about 10cm long, so too small
for eating, but are a rather pretty silvery blue colour and have
amazingly thin fins behind their gills that fold out to form their
gliding wings.

After lunch, the clouds receded and we enjoyed some decent sunshine
again. The wind dropped completely – so, there was nothing for it but
to take the sails down and use the bathing costumes we were already
wearing for their intended purpose!

The water is an amazing blue colour – a deep inky blue, with a
translucent quality almost like the blue in the centre of a flame or
on a peacock’s feather. The sea temperature is really warm, at 29.8
C, according to our instruments.

Swimming right in the middle of the ocean is a very strange feeling.
We were all very cautious about it – especially as getting back onto
the boat was quite tricky. Rafiki has a convenient bathing platform
on her stern, but even in the calms of today, you had to time your
ascent onto the boarding ladder carefully with the intervals of the
long waves. What an amazing experience, though – we wouldn’t have
missed it for the world!

This evening we had radio contact from a French ketch called Tictac,
sailing from Cape Verde to Martinique. We saw them close to us on the
horizon with no sails up – like us, they had stopped to have a swim
and were waiting for the winds to come in before resuming their sail.
It is lovely that it seems to be standard practice to be in radio
contact with any boat you come across out here and the kids are very
good at conducting these conversations for us.

This period of being becalmed has also enabled us to do a few fixes:
we moved the dinghy and various items living underneath it, as they
had all slipped onto the lines which lead back into the cockpit, which
prevented the reefing lines from running through properly; Rob
repaired the staysail furler, which was coming apart a bit (so now we
have our staysail operational again – yay!) and we filled up our fuel
tanks with spare diesel. We’re now ready for some wind again.

Tonight, we have managed to set sail again, but very slowly and
through intermittent rain showers, which tend to kill what little wind
we have. It is a bit cooler than on previous nights, and for that we
are very grateful. The forecast is for some squalls to affect us over
the next day or so, but otherwise for us to find our lovely trade
winds again, so St. Lucia here we come!

FOOD:

lunch – chicken curry and rice; segments of fresh orange
supper – tortilla wraps and leftover Mexican chilli