Cerulean of Penryn - A ship sailed from the east and sailed to the west

DATE:2018-12-01 04:00Z
TITLE: ARC+ LEG 2 DAY 11
LOCATION: 14:23 048:27
AUTHOR: Richard Rowley
BODY:

Distance to go 723Nm, Distance Sailed 1445Nm

Hi, and a pick and a punch for the first of the month. Gosh December already, I have lost all concept of time since being on this trip. Whilst you at home will be wondering what warm clothes to wear on a cold and frosty morning I am sitting on deck in the middle of the night wearing shorts and a tea shirt, and bare feet and i am still too hot. You may well be thinking of going off and getting some Christmas shopping done today...I have not been of this boat for 11 days now and it may be another 5 or 6 days before we arrive at St Lucia and we see a shop. The mere thought of Christmas had not occurred to until I realized the date...aahhh and bliss no shops for a thousand miles...

There is so much to tell you about, i keep on forgetting things when I am writing these blogs so here goes..

Well it is 4am back at home in the UK, and 2am boat time on Cerulean, however we have now crossed 45 degrees Longitude and we are actually in time zone UT (GMT) -3 so it should only be 1am in the bit of Atlantic Ocean I am in. Just to explain that a bit more Uk time is UT/GMT 0 every 15 degrees west we go it is minus 1hr or UT-1 we are now at Longitude 48 and a bit we crossed over 45 degree longitude yesterday and should have moved our clock back another hour to UT-3 but we are maverick and a law unto ourselves out here and we only have ourselves to worry about, we shall move boat time back 1hr tomorrow sometime...time is an illusion reality doubly so. As long as we know when noon is for our particular longitude which we work out the rough time from UT/GMT we are ok and can find our position with the sextant if need be...but hey, the GPS is a lot easier than all those sun sights, tables and sums etc. (but not as interesting) Anyway, I hope you understood all that, it does my head in. We have two times on the boat GMT/UTC and boat time, some things need to to be done to UTC such as celestial navigation because everything is worked out from the Greenwich meridian, and SSB radio communications because we may be communicating across several time zones. For life on board we work to boat time, for watches, meal times and log keeping. Got that, yes, good.

There are so many things to tell you about sailing across an ocean on a small boat other than what time it actually is...
I am back on my night watch, tonight from midnight to 3am boat time, there are 4 of us on the boat, we each do a 3 hour night watch between 6pm and 6am which is roughly the hours of darkness, there is actually about 13 hours of darkness, and depending on when boat time and the local time zone is it gets dark about 0630 and light about 0730 give or take. Then during the day there are three 4 hour watches, what it means is that we all move on one watch so we do a different watch each day. All very confusing i know

When I started writing this blog it was 2am it is now 4am. the watch had been going fine a nice gentle swell and wind of 12-15kts pushing us along at a easy 5-6kts, then at about 03:45 things started going a bit mad, and i had leap up form my cosy corner in the cockpit and wrestle with the wheel to help 'Old Harry' the windvane self steering keep the boat under control as we stomped off at 8.5kts in the wrong direction with 20kts+ of wind, having managed to get us back on course i managed to furl away part of the headsail and that got us back under control and settled then Jeremy came up on deck to take over the watch and we decided to gybe the boat round back on our due west course to our destination (we had been heading south west for a bit to find some wind...and boy did we find it) and whilst we where about it to put a reef in the main (to reef the sail is to shorten sail to make the boat more controllable in stronger winds in case you where wondering) anyway, that all took about an hour working on the fore deck in the dark wielding a 12ft pole around on a boat that is pitching up and down and rolling from side to side, (all I can say is don't try this at home) all done now and no injuries, no damage, must be good...gosh i could do with a stiff drink now. anyway that's all done and Jeremy is now on watch and I am done below finishing this off instead if turning in for a kip.

But there is plenty more to tell you about...

I forgot to mention this yesterday, the bio-luminescence in our wake is an incredible beautiful sight to see. When I look over the side from the cockpit at the disturbed water from our bow wave there is the odd green spark, this shows up even better on dark nights like tonight when there is no moon, however if I go up forward to the foredeck, don't worry I am clipped on' the bow wave is awash with green sparks it is amazing, it reminds me a bit of the 'things' in the film Avatar, and is probably the inspiration for the film in the first place. If I go to the back of the boat and look down over th stern in the disturbed and turbulent water from our transom and rudder there is this trail of glowing water, it sort of glows white with these green sparks. Now these green sparks this bio-luminescence is caused by millions of microscopic organisms, plankton, the building block off life, the bottom of the food chain for the fish, dolphins, whales, sea birds and us...just remember I am out here suffering all this and looking at all this stuff so you don't have to...

One last thing before I go to bed. Yesterday I was talking about Orion and his shoulders Beteguese and Belatrix and his belt, well tonight I was looking at Orion's Nebula through the binoculars, it was dancing all over the place but it is an amazing cluster of stars and coloured gases (not that I could make out that much through my binoculars from a boat that is bouncing around all over the place...but you should be able to see more) Now Orion keeps his Nebula down between his legs, if Orion was a Scottish Warrior it would be where his sporran is, if you know what I mean, there are three little cluster there they run at sort of right angles from his belt going down between his legs they are quite faint but you can still see them with the naked eye. Next to Orion's Nebula there is another Nebula called De Maian's Nebula, don't know about the other one. I have also been looking through the binoculars at the Pleides Cluster and the Heydes Star Cluster all really wonderful to observe if you have nothing better to do and a clear, warm dark night at 2:00 in the morning....you must try it sometime, you just have to find a place with no light pollution...I can see all theses stars and they are cut through by a swath of billion stars from the milky way. it is awesome.

And of course when I came on watch it was darker, darker than a dark thing, but now a lying down crescent moon has arisen from the East

Still plenty more to tell you about

Fayre Wynds and Kynd Seas
Cerulean of Penryn
-----
At 01/12/2018 06:47 (utc) our position was 14°19.43'N 048°46.61'W