Morgane of Sark - early update after much nightly activity

An early update today, as there has been quite some activity since yesterday evening.

It was a squally night!! They popped up at the radar all the time. Sometimes suddenly seem to develop right next to us. One hit us right on our butt with more than 40 knots of wind and a tremendous amount of water pouring down from the sky. Herco even had to put on his Musto heavy weather sail jacket. While even at night it is still around 27 degrees..

But, we were prepared and with only a reefed main we experienced no problems.

The good thing about the squals is that the disappear as quick as they arrive. It lasted around 10 or 15 minutes.

The rest of the night was genua in, genua (half) out, as the squals flew by. Fortunately, we weren’t hit that hard anymore, just a few tails passed by with a few raindrops and gusty winds.

The wind was overall very gusty during the whole night. Actually, it still is. Varying from 12 to 30 knots. The main stays reefed all the time now.

What else happened last night? We saw a strange light North of us. It was lightning up the entire sky. Sometimes it seemed to shine at us, like a lighthouse. But, nothing was to be seen on the radar or AIS. Are there UFO’s out here?

We changed course to get away from it, and after a while it disappeared. This morning we heard on the SSB net that there were more boats that saw it although further away. The Aqualina, who was sailing 25 miles North of us, saw that strange light South of them, we just heard through the VHF. So, it must have been something in between us.

In the morning SSB net, we learned that some boats of our fleet have encountered big fishing ships the last day. One without AIS or radar reflection, pulling long, long nets.
This must be those “fishing factories” as seen in “Sea spiracy”. We have keep a close eye on those during our watches..

What else….? We just counted 24 flying fishes on our deck. We hope that one the nice “pinguïn bird” as Merel calls them will come visit us and eat some of them.

Life inside the boat is not all that easy at the moment. “One hand for yourself and one for the boat”, doesn’t always work. Wish I had four hands sometimes. Especially, when trying to make something to eat or making a cup of cappuccino. To make a bowl of yogurt in the morning you need one hand to hold on to in order not to fall, one for the bowl, but also one to open the fridge and one to put the yogurt back into the fridge…

By the way, the yogurt turned out amazingly well.

But, getting back, the constant sudden movements in the boat are tiring. Feeling like an acrobat at times. We are starting to get fed up with being thrown around all the time. In the cockpit, under our hardtop, it is still comfortable though. So, there life goes on as usual.

This afternoon, we will continue the pup quiz with the Sandy Cay. They are still within VHF distance. That will be fun again.

And within a half hour we have our daily SSB chat with High Cotton.

So, an exciting day so far and you are updated again.

Current position: N 11* 59 26 W 56* 15 48
Cog 255-270 degrees
Sog 6,0-8,0 knots
Waves around 2,5- 3 mtrs, but some appears much higher.
Butterflying again during the day.

We sailed 1826 miles so far
Still 329 to go.
We hope to arrive the day after tomorrow, late in the evening. By now, we are really looking forward to it!

Xxx Crew Morgane of Sark