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Koala - Dec 7th: Zombie watch



This morning I was greeted in the mirror in the aft heads by the sight of a cast member of Shaun of the Dead looking back at me. Tough night with very little sleep again. It is the problem of sailing down wind in the dark in unstable conditions with no instruments where the boat will not happily steer itself without slatting the main badly and waking everyone up. About every 5 minutes.

Then this morning, I decided that the wind had shifted sufficiently to warrant a gybe, so I called the off watch on deck (Julia), who responded very positively considering, and appeared a couple of minutes later blinking myopically in a mole like fashion at the upcoming sun behind me. We gybed the boat, re-setting the pole etc. and she (the boat, not Julia) immediately settled down, and steered herself beautifully all morning without a single slat or bang from the main. All I can think is that there was some component of the swell that we could not see in the dark that was giving us such grief. Only wish we had done it 10 hours earlier!

So I then spent a portion of the morning, staring at the sea in a fairly slack jawed fashion, before doing my WOD (Workout Of the Day) in the cockpit in an effort to stave off the atrophying effect of inactivity on muscles. It is quite difficult as the amount of effort required depends on what part of the roll cycle the boat is at. You either get a nice easy press up, or your face is rammed in to the cockpit coaming by a superior force!

Since then, after morning coffee, we seem to have perked up sufficiently to get on with the activities of the day, such as filling the solar shower, daily comms and weather gathering, and J is now making some dough for a batch of bread to go in the oven this afternoon.

The area of forecast light winds seems to be likely to extend further south than first thought. We are heading south west but are unlikely to achieve anything further south than 15 degrees N in the next 24 hours, which may not be enough. Going to try and get a GRIB file now.


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