Lost in the future,
A Lady
Stephen Hyde
Thu 1 Dec 2011 17:49
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Thursday 1st December
2011
Sailing from Pilots Point Marina, Westbrook to
Antigua, via Bermuda, Total distance 1,600 + miles
Did you ever flippen well wake up and wonder to
yourself, " what am I doing and where am I going " ! well today is
one of those days
where Skipper is wondering what to do with
the future, Is it sailing around the world for ever and meeting lots of
lovely and interesting
people, or returning to Terra Firma, and wither
away , or return to some sort of work situation for mental stimulation , not to
mention
that it could actually earn a few dollars. or
just enjoy the Grandchildren, All major decisions, but at least they dont
have to be made today.
Since the last Blog, Aileen and Skipper have been
back to Ireland and caught up with all our families, our friends, our
children,
and our grandchildren,
Then we travelled down to Spain, where we met more
of our friends, including Dave and Sue Mackay,( World ARC ) and delt with
some
housekeeping issues, ( the kind of things that
crawl out of the woodwork after an absence of
nearly 3 years )
Then we travelled to " Zelam an Zea" in
Austria to meet our daughter Laeh, husband Johnny and grandchild Jamie,
who were there for a
few days prior to returning to Mumbai in
India, where Johnny works,
Then back to Dublin, where we stayed with
Stefan for a few days before returning to Cork where we stayed with Sarah
and Paul,
before returning to " A Lady" ..... This time Skipper brought two
friends to do the trip to Antigua, while Aileen
remained at home for a break.
On wed. 23rd Nov. we got a lift from Viv Nathan
from Cork to Shannon and flew from there to N.Y. ( skipper had lots of
trouble at Shannon
because he took his US visa out of his temp.
passport and stuck it into his brand new full Irish psaaport, )
Ohhhhh Skipper , ohh my Gawd,
how could one be sooooo flippen STUPID ,,, and all
this will take time to sort out,,, ahhhhhhh ! blooming clown, Idiot, dumb, dumb,
Bottom of the class for that, in fact " go stand in
the corner facing the wall "
We stayed at the New York YC in Manhattan
where we met Clayton Love Jnr, and Barbara by chance,
The arrangments at the club were organised by
our NBF's in N.Y. Tom and Linda Delaney, thanks Tom.
Of course it was " Thanks giving day " on Thursday
, so most places , including the marina where " A Lady " was moored , were all
closed for the long weekend, However , we
made the most of it, lots of things needed doing on the boat including putting
on
the unused UK mainsail that has been rolled up and plonked in the
Lazetette since ( I understand ) 2006,
MONDAY 28th , Our friend Will who owns the
restaurant at the marina left a lovely bottle of wine for us on the boat, all
for Christmas,
Then we had a few minor issues, ( minor really
means major, ) before leaving, which was scheduled for 14.00hrs,
Issues like pay the bills, Get diesel, ( which
there was none at the marina or any where else either, ) get water, food etc,
the repaired headsails , fix the Davits, sort out
the generator once again, ( not starting )
Skipper then spoke to Jacinta, Aileens freind in
C.T. we would meet in Jan.
There were lots of emails on the boat ,including
one from our friend Jan Langer in Manchester, USA
In any event, finished or not, we departed Pilots
Point at 14.30, monday 28th Nov. headed NE along " Long Island Sound"
throught the race with the tide in our favour at 12
knots, It was dark when we rounded Montauk Point and out into
the
Atlantic once more, then turned SE and headed for
Bermuda, a beautifull night, a great SW breeze and we were sailing along
merrily
with only 450L of fuel on board, However the
weather forecast indicated plenty of wind for the trip, In fact they predicted a
SE gale
for Tuesday night ( on our nose ), and they
were right,
Tuesday evening we got a terrible hammering,
so we had to sail down the NW side of the Gulf Stream, paralell to the coast for
24hours
on a port tack with the SE gale reaching 56knots at
times, not to mention the lightning. The wind was screaming through the rigging,
and it all sounded like something from the
movies, surreal,
At times like this, we would wonder to ourselves,
"Yes, we have to be mad to be doing this, "
The seas were huge and even though we were doing
7.5 knots well reefed down, we got a pasting that we wont forget for a
while,
Mark and John were sick, and skipper was only
barely hanging onto his insides, Despite
all our preperations in advance of this gale,
things were still flying around down below, even
the door to the cookies press came right off ,can you believe that , it came
right off
and flew across the saloon sounding like someone
had just fired a " Bazooka" But, but, NO leaks,
Wed. mornig around 01.00hrs, the wind began to
abate , skipper spent the whole night on dack and watched the lightning display
with awe.
By 12.00hrs, the weather was much improved, but the
swell was still gigantic, ( well you know yourself , maybe just huge ) but
thats
what it felt like, massive,
Throughout the whole gale, " A Lady" was great,
She managed a bad situation in her stride, just like any good lady would.
Mark was unable to eat, so he got lots of TLC
instead, and by sunset, he had improved considerably, John was fully back to
normal
as was skipper.
Wed. night saw lots of stars, a waining moon early
in the evening and we had a WNW 25 knot breeze blowing us along towards Bermuda,
This morning, we set up a goose wing situation to
get that extra bit of boat speed followed by a good healthy cooked breckfast,
consisting of :-
a couple of fried eggs, ( sunny side up,) bacon
bits, Tomatoes, plus baked beans on toast, Mark was starving and
gobbled the lot down
in the blink of an eye,
We are now 239 miles NW of bermuda, having covered
486 miles since 14.30 Monday.
Thats it for now,
Signed :- Stephen Hyde (
Skipper )
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