Atlantic Crossing - Morning of the squalls

Stargazer of Southampton
Susie and Adam (both think they are skipper)
Tue 11 Jan 2011 18:07
 
11:01.11, 14:04.17N 58:19.20W
 
A nice night sailing last night with us both sleeping so well when we were off our watches that we had to be woken up and then woken up again in order to be told to get up.  The previous night had been not so good as it was a noisy and bumpy ride no matter which angle you went at the waves.   Both of us have started dreaming that we are on watch and steering the boat - keep on waking up wondering where the displays have gone and where the steering wheel is, it takes a few minutes to realise that you are lying in bed and not steering the boat. 
 
It's going to be strange when we actually get there and we can have a normal nights sleep again - even when we were in Mindelo I kept waking up and seeing Adam in the night and panicking that no one was actually steering the boat. .  . til I realised that we were anchored.
 
With dawn this morning we saw that the night had been hiding 3 separate squalls which all appeared at sunrise - at least two of them were downwind of us so not a problem, the third one got us though but at least that was relatively short lived.  A bit later on saw some clouds which looked possibly a bit squally so took in some of the Genoa. . .  but didn't expect much to happen - then it hit us, there was no rain with this one, just 32 knot winds for 40 minutes or so.  The waves were getting pretty steep so the autopilot wasn't really coping and we were ending up side on to the waves so, horror, I had to actually steer the boat myself - but I do have the advantage over the autopilot of having Adam look behind me and shout 'Wave' so that I can turn and surf down it rather than get pushed around sideways by it. 
 
Once that was over the sky is now blue and we're back to being pushed along again by nice winds with the slosh, slosh, slosh of the waves going under us.
 
Not seen too many birds when we were mid atlantic but they are appearing again now and coming to have a look at us, and another mystery - where do the fish scales come from? - having a look about the deck yesterday found a number of fish scales stuck to ropes and things, not small scales the flying fish - these are all thumb nail sized, but no other evidence of fish so no idea where they have come from - can't see that the waves would be fully of fish scales but assume they must have been splashed on board.
 
No more news - we're just concentrating on keeping going.  There are some strong winds forecast for Weds afternoon and Thurs so we're hoping we can avoid these.  Not far to go now