Where's the Japanese phrase book when you really need it??!? And we really needed it last night.
Yesterday went very smoothly, in fact I even produced my personal best culinary work in the galley. I made a goat's cheese tart (basically a quiche) from scratch including the pastry, with onions, tomatoes, olives, herbs, etc. It turned out pretty well, even if I do say so myself. After eating, Heather and I had a nice cup of tea and congratulated ourselves yet again on managing to miss virtually all of the squall activity (we have seen quite a lot of squalls most nights, with thunder, lighting, wind and rain). So far we had only really benefited from them, with a little increased wind and a light deck wash on rare occasions.
Last night all that changed. As usual the wind picked up after dark and our broad reach quickened pace as we watched the passing squalls. Then the squalls started coming closer, getting bigger and we got wetter. Heather had the first sleep till 10.30pm and then came up to relieve me from the watch. I went down at about 10.45, having pointed out where the squalls seemed to be and where the fishing boat was about 12 miles or so ahead. I probably got about 45 minutes of sleep when the boat heeled over sharply enough to wake me so I called up to see if Heather wanted a hand. 99.9% of the time when this happens I get a response of "no, I'm fine, go back to sleep!" - this time I only got silence, so I bolted up the companionway to see Heather wrestling with the wheel in some fairly rough conditions.
The chart plotter was a sight to behold. We have a radar which overlays radar information on the screen over the chart; we mostly use the radar function to spot rain activity, and therefore squalls at night. Rain shows up as a purple smudge on the screen, and at 12 miles zoom the screen was pretty much all purple. The only clear spot was where the fishing vessel was making its way slowly along at 5 knots, obviously at that speed they were engaged in fishing, but we were too far away to see if it was trawling or long line. What's more, the wind not only increases in squalls, it also changes direction unpredictably, and the wind was forcing us to try and pass the fishing boat's bow rather than steering well clear of their stern.
I started calling the fishing boat repeatedly to find out if we could in fact pass astern of them, as I was concerned that they may be trailing something which we might snag. They dutifully ignored us until we were just a couple of miles away from them and screaming along at 8 to 9 knots. Eventually they answered, only to tell us they could not speak any English. Our Japanese is not what it could be, so we tried desperately to explain through a kind of VHF charades that we would like to pass astern of them if it was safe to do so - could they tell us if it was safe? In the end we just pointed the bow past their stern and asked them to check their AIS - they announced that our course was safe so on we trundled. It was a wet, wild and windy affair where lots of different factors come together at once to make things a little more stressful than we'd like. Let's hope we've leant our lesson; I think we'll be putting a reef or two in this evening before bed...
The evening became a lot more relaxing for me as Heather continued her watch and let me get some much-needed sleep for the next 4 hours or so. Heather's evening continued in the same vein with the squalls; she even had a big flying fish try and take refuge with her in the cockpit. Apparently she felt something thump onto her lap and land beside her on the seat - when she reached out in the dark to see what it was it wriggled as you'd expect a flying fish to. We managed to get him back in the water, but I noticed a scaly impact mark on the inside of our hard dodger's ceiling - he would have had a hell of a headache from that impact!
So here's hoping for a relaxing day today with lots of sleep, and a quiet and uneventful night tonight...
PS - I can't believe we haven't had the para-sailor spinnaker up for about a week. Believe it or not, we've been on a beam or broad reach all the way with a little too much wind to fly it!