Hummingbird Blog
Monday 9 December 2024
As I write this
blog from the navigation station, the plotter flickers our penultimate waypoint
where we will gybe north to Saint Lucia's final waypoint and the last few
nautical miles to the finish line.
Weather is
supported by both the ARC and Rubicon 3, helping determine our strategic Course
Over Ground (COG) optimization.
The ARC weather zone map is a 23 square grid, with Saint Lucia residing
in Romeo Romeo. Hummingbird
currently abuts the easterly Quebec Quebec grid. One of my self-appointed tasks is to
mark our rough position every few watches on the grid sheet. It is with great satisfaction that I can
see that I will soon put a small pencil dot in RR.
I have done
deliveries before, but I never done what is considered a -true passage. As with most trips, no matter the
duration and distance, as the end approaches, the anticipation accelerates. I was once told when my children where
young, "don't wish the years away, the days are long but the years are
short".
This morning
during breakfast, fellow traveller and watch companion, Ken Pickard remarked, "If you had told me that you would put 12 people in a space the size of my
laundry room, put the tumbler on high, and let us pitch, roll, yawl, heave,
surge and sway for nearly three weeks AND we would be relatively cheerful about
it, I would tell you when fish fly, oh wait . . ."
The trick now is
to really remember our individual reasons for embarking - while the watch may be
long, the trip is short now. They
key is to try not to make it about the destination . . . but it is sure about
the beer on arrival.
Chip
Haskell