The lack of an entry yesterday has its explanation in something as ordinary as the weather. Yesterday there was an awful lot of it. For an awful lot of the day.
To put it another way; it is now almost 6:30 in the afternoon and the sun should set around now. However we haven't seen the sun for the last two days. What we have seen is gale-force winds from north-east (incidentally north-east is almost exactly where we want to go..) and torrential rain.
Yesterday was spent reefing and changing into smaller sails, as well as being soaking wet and slightly miserable.
We had winds of around 30 knots with an average of 20-25 knots for most of yesterday, last night and this morning. Today has been slightly better, and the weather might, just might be improving. So far our expectations of the "truly delightful passage" that the pilotbooks have promised us have been thoroughly shattered and ran through the grinder. Sleep has been a luxurious commodity for some of us. I moved my mattress on to the floor last night. That is the place in the boat where it moves the least as it is almost in the dead centre of the boat and as low as you can get. In addition to that I can just squeeze my shoulders between the toilet-door and the drawers on the other side, so I don't flop around as a flying-fish on deck an early morning.
I slept as a baby in other words.
My nightwatch however was wet and extremely miserable. My iPod was in a waterproof bag and because of this I couldn't properly operate the controls. The best I could do was to put it on "random" and then the damn contraption saw it fit to play Eurythmics, Bee Gees and Sissel Kyrkjebø for five hours straight as I was holding on for dear life, considering whether there was any point holding on for something as miserable that.
To top it off, my earplugs were full of water and incapable of reproduce any form of bass. Anyone who has listened to a vicious iPod refusing to play anything but Sissel Kyrkjebø without bass for five hours will understand the urge for for a quiet, padded room with nice people in white coats.A-hannyway, that's almost over now. The weather seems to be clearing. It has (almost) not rained today, and the wind has hardly touched the 25 knot-mark, and I can yet again operate my iPod and the earplugs are dry.
Day 8, January 6, 2010
Ok, this is obviously turning into a bi-daily entry thing, I'm sure you don't mind. Yesterday was nothing spectacular, same ocean, different day. Weather pretty much the same as the day before. The day was spent reading, chatting and eating. We even had the time at the end of the day to throw in a game of cards. That was yesterday.
Today on the other hand, brings change. Not a helluva lotta change, but change anyhow. During night the wind died down quite a bit and it has been like that for the day as well. It is less than 10 knots now, typically around 5 knots. That's just about the minimum of wind we need to keep going. We can still sail in 3-4 knots, but that require flat water. Luckily the waves died down together with the wind, so we are still making good speed in a lot more comfort than the last days. We still haven't done less than 100 miles towards the target per 24 hrs. since the first day.
Today we upgraded our fishing-gear with some stuff that my mom brought with her to Thailand. Thank you mom! Hopefully now we'll catch plenty of fish. The retired lure we were using were something we made ourselves after Joseph showed us how on the island of Anuta. (See the "Anuta" blogpost under "Solomon Islands"). Other than that I have made bread and we have collectively put off trying to find out why our masthead light suddenly didn't work when we tried turning it on last night. The joy of having a boat, something always breaks down... Too bad it didn't happen before we left Thailand were we had a "fix-almost-everything-that-don't-work session". Not Everything of course. We wanted to be able to leave before easter...
Speaking of thing that don't work. I listened to our radio this morning. "Listened" is a keyword here because that's all our radio is good for. We can only receive, not send.
Anyway, I listened to the "Indian Ocean-Net" where all or most of the yachts in the IO gossip about weather and fishing and sunburns and all those things that we yachties are extremely interested in. The point of pointing out that was that I heard from the other boats that none of the boats around us has got much wind either. Some of them were motoring, so I guess we're not that bad off anyway!
Day 9, Jan. 7, 2010
Last night I went to bed. Nothing spectacular, I know. I go to bed every night, some nights even twice if I have to get up at midnight to do my watch, as tonight. I'm actually on watch right now. Not that I'm watching much, apart from the horizon every ten minutes or so. The boat is handling itself and I can spend my time writing or whatever. BUT: Yesterday I went to bed at midnight, and I knew I had the rest of the night off. I was looking forward to a full night of good sleep. I haven't slept very good at all since leaving Thailand. In part because we have mostly been beating towards the wind, and when we do that the bunks up in the forecastle with me and Egil in them are being shaken around quite well.
I often get up in the morning (or in the middle of the night, according to the schedule) feeling like I've taken a turn in the spinner, and maybe even the tumbledryer. The difference being that I don't at all smell like the fresh washing you normally pick out of these appliances. Also when we're beating there's a bit of water getting thrown up over the bow, which means we need to keep the forward hatch closed, which means no ventilation in the sleeping quarters, which contributes to the general discomfort. However last night seemed like a night for perfect sleeping. The weather was nice all day and into the night. Gently rolling waves, wind just strong enough to keep the sails up, all hatches wide open. UNTIL I BLOODY WENT TO BED GODDAMN IT! I had just fallen asleep with a contented smile on my lips when the wind picked up to 15-20 knots from the front, the bow started doing the rumba and, just in case I was under narcosis and hadn't woken up yet, Murphy threw in (literally) a good bucket of seawater through the hatch and onto my disconsolately sobbing person in the bunk.
So after a night of stubborn sleep I got up this morning not exactly feeling like a million bucks, but maybe like five cents. Anyway five cents are slightly better than two cents and three mugs of coffee had my eyes opened to the point I could actually take in the world around me which today consisted of a big, blue ocean, ten metres of boat and a clear blue sky. From trying to relieve myself on the northern side of the boat I could also establish that the wind was blowing about 12 knots from about that direction. Marvellous morning.
Today was spent doing the normal stuff which can be summed up with one word that rhymes with "failing". The spice that faith decided to garnish our day with came in the form of seawater. Funny how that seems to come in abundance in these neck of the woods. This particular batch of salted H2O were brought to our attention when we got wet feet by treading around the cabin bunk which also doubles as our library; there are two lockers under the mattress where we keep a couple of hundred books. A further investigation led us into our library lockers that had now turned into our pulp-storage.
A leak somewhere had collected itself under the cabin bunk and started attacking our reading material. About half of our books were a total loss, the other half was divided into "dry", "almost dry, can be saved" and "hopeless, but let's try and save them anyway".
In short; the boat now smells like a cellulosis-factory and we have books in various stages of sogginess in half a dozen places. The half of our collection that was a total loss went overboard. Normally we bring ALL our rubbish ashore, but dealing with 60 kg of sodden books on board a small boat just called for desperate measures. Sorry nature.
The leak itself was the centre of a lot of attention. Rather, the location of the leak was. A number of theories was launched, investigated and rejected. After a couple of hours we were able to trace it to a disused seacock that is located so high up on the topsides that it only allows water to enter when we're well heeled. ...As we have been for the last week. Furthermore a clogged vent stopped the water from taking its intended route into the sump where it could easily have been pumped out, and instead allowed it to make paper-mache out of our collection of war-, crime- and classic, russian litterature. Remind me to strike Murphy of my christmas-card list.Despite all, searching for-, and eventually finding and dealing with that leak was an exititing treasure-hunt. Also it proves that even though having a boat is a lot of unforeseen problems to be dealt with, they often come in a form that it is possible to gain the satisfaction of diagnosing and dealing with yourself. ...I still wish my NZ Whitewater Guide and Mt. Cook Climbing Guide weren't dripping wet though.
Day 11, 09 January 2010
I had the morning watch today. Dad woke me up at 0400 and I dutifully got up and out and resumed my duties. ...which basically consists of sitting around watching the sky and scanning the horizon now and then. As I was doing my business I recognized an old friend; The Big Dipper (Karlsvogna). I haven't seen it since I was back home the last time, more than a year ago, yet there it was, upside-down, but apart from that just as I remembered it. I located the Northstar from it, and there I was suddenly, with the Northstar to starboard and the Southern Cross to port. ....and then after a while the sunrise behind the stern as it always is. The sunrise always behind us and the sunset in front of our bow.
Last night was in its entirety spent employing an advanced sailing technique called "drifting". This nifty little technique is normally pulled out of our big bag of tricks when there's absolutely no wind. It works by taking down all sails and relying on a kind current to take you towards your goal. In this case we moved at around 3 knots in almost the right direction, not bad at all.
However after I had taken a svim around the boat, cut my toenails and done whatever I could think of to pass the time, I woke up the others by starting the engine. We motored through most of the day. Even that wasn't too bad. Almost welcome hearing the engine again. At lunchtime we motored straight through the biggest pod of dolphins ever. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, jumping all around us, moving over to investigate the boat and play in front of the bow.
I never get tired of watching them, and today the ocean was dead flat because of the lack of wind and you could look down at them as through the wall of an aquarium. They posed for a few photos, and then were gone after an hour or so. Later a few stragglers paid us some visits, but we never saw the rest of the gang.
Then right after we started sailing again we met some other people for the first time in 11 days. We passed an Sri Lankan fishing boat quite close (oh yeah; we passed Sri Lanka somewhere beyond our northern horizon today...). They were laying their nets and we had just put up twin headsails, so none of us were very manouverable and unfortunately we couldn't take advantage of their offer to swap drinks for fish. We shouted across to each other where we were from, where we were going etc, then we were gone again...
Ingen kommentarer:
Legg inn en kommentar