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Endeavour of Cork - Day 5 - Monday 21st November



Day 5 - Monday 21st November

Well, our wish has been granted. We have flat seas today, about 10kts of wind, and the spinnaker up. It's not exactly blistering sunshine (thank goodness!) but it's warm - very, very warm - and dry. The rails are like a chinese laundry, trying to get our sodden clothes dry.

I have thought long and hard, and have failed to come up with a word to describle last night's rain. I consulted the others, and the combined experiences of Nepal, Thailand and India in monsoon season did not match what fell on us last night. They promised us squalls, but not on the scale that hit us once darkness fell yesterday evening. The wind never got to madness levels - probably max 22/23kts - but it skewed everywhere. In my watch alone (6-8pm) I was dragged from doing 260 degrees (our desired course) down to 210, then over the course of about half an hour it gradually came back to 260 and the wind moderated to about 15kts and I thought "phew, that's the end of that". Then off we went again, up to about 310 this time, up the wind came again, and down came the hammering rain. I had started my watch in my wet legs (because I'm sick of having a wet bum from sitting on the wet seats at night) but no jacket - by the end of the watch I may as well have stood under the shower or jumped in the sea in all my clothes - I had to wring everything out and towel myself down before going back inside. Meanwhile, Anais had been dragged even further off course and was now pointing back at Cape Verde!!! I'm not sure how long it took for everything to settle back down to "normal" but when I got back up at 4am we were at least back on a broad reach pointing in vaguely the right direction. I made an executive decision and climbed back into my sodden clothes - underwear and all - my wet gear was soaked inside and out, and no point in wetting another set of clothes was my reasoning. Yuck!!! It rained and blew for about an hour, and then finally - finally! - it calmed down for good.

We have got the hatches open for a while, did a cleanup of the saloon, got most of the clothes dry, got dishcloths and teatowels rinsed out (in seawater) and more or less dried before another shower just started a few minutes ago. We got the spinny up for a bit as well, but thought we saw a squall approaching so took it down again quickly - we can't afford to lose any more sails! We're getting more efficient at getting it up and down, though, so I'm sure we'll have another go later if we spot a clear patch ahead.

As I type, Denise has just served us lunch - delicious egg rolls - Conor and Laura are watching The Blue Planet (as if we didn't have enough sea around us without watching oceans indoors as well!!!), Anais is computing something sextant-related, and Dermot is helming in the sunshine.

Laura's corn-row hairdo has give up the ghost and fallen out, and she now looks like someone plugged her into the mains. She got a free shower in the rain last night (complete with shower gel!) - she'll have to wait for the next squall to get the newly-liberated hair washed!

The radio net today was very broken and distorted - we didn't get all boats' reports - but it looks like we didn't make as much progress on the fleet as we'd hoped. Lots of people reported very light winds yesterday morning, but we had consistently good winds all day so we thought we'd whoosh our way up the fleet another bit. But looks like the others found wind also.

We passed the 1/4 way mark a while ago, which has made us all smile. Still 3/4 to go though.....

But as long as the wind keep blowing, we'll be ok!!

Endeavour, over and out.


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