12th December
Sweetest Thing
Anthony Richards
Wed 12 Dec 2012 15:50
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18' 53" 16 N
049' 26"10 W
The curse of the Lady Marigot...
This is a tale of a
boat possessed by a dark spirit.. a demon onf the
sea...
It was a dark and squally night, I came up on watch
and Anthony said good I've been counting the minutes lets gybe this
Genoa...
So out we went, the muggy humidity in the night air
hung heavy, in the clear night sky stars sparkled above, but a dark cloud
approached.
Just as I released the winch the rain began...
Due to the humidity I wasnt wearing my waterproof jacket and so my shirt
soon became pretty soggy...
Once the genoa was gybed and safely secured we
headed back inside to shelter, and i went to put on my jacket. I emerged from my
cabin just as thenoise began... Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrr werrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr
brrrrwerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr..... A were'ing sound, What the bloddy hells
that??Anthony asked... Bilges I guessed, after a quick check it wasnt the the
electric bildge pump emptying the bilges... no... it stopped... silence... then
minuites later... brrrrrrrrr
werrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....
what on earth... it must be a winch I said.. we
turned off the electricity to the winches and sure enough it stopped...
Which winche, not one of the genoa winches
and these were the only ones we'd used that night...
It must be the Main winch on the mast...
Anthony turned the switch back on and we waited.... sure enough aftrer a few
minutes the winch started up again... I shone a torch onto the winch
through the hatch in the saloon and there turning away in the blackness of the
night wasthe winch... Had this been an active winch, (had it had a sheet on
it a reefing line or halyard on it it would have lead to sails ripping or rigs
breaking, luckily we leave it in active.
Ok mystery solved its jjust nthe devil turning our
winches onand off....
I went out to sit up on tyhe helmseat, keep an eye
on the genoa watching incase we accidently gybed whilst going down a wave, (we
were goose winging with the wind behind us...)
All of a sudden i heard Bang bang
bangbangbang...Anthony stuck his head out... what's that.. I had noidea I
couldnt see anything unusual.. and I thought the noise had come from the
saloon... We botyh looked around unable to identify what it was then we noticed
something in the drain at the entrance to the saloon.. A beasty
flying fish had landed.... Phew, so I picked him up and threw him over
board...
5 minutes later the mist desended again and we
lost all our saterlites on the GPS.. NO FIX flashed up... What was going
on??!!!
Later after a calmer hour on watch, ensuring
we didnt gybe and kept the genoa full... It was time to wake Hannah, for her
watch on the demon ship... I put the kettle on for her to have a cuppa, and
in this minute the boat went down a wave and accidentally gybed.... I went
up gybed her back, shone the torch up to check the sail and yes you guessed
it, the main sail had ripped AGAIN!!! this time in the same place as we'd
repaired before.. I woke Anthony and Hannah and
we took the sail down...
The boat is bewitched I tell you!! she
has refused to go to the caribbean this whole trip and is now doing all she
can to make our life as difficult as possible!!! throwing us challenge after
challenge Anthony says we're not reparing the sail for a third
time...
We are now heading to St Lucia on the genoa only,
carrying a staedy 6.5 knts.. due to arrive sunday evening!!!!
OH MY DAYS!!! What a night!! feeling a
little tired today but the sun is out and its just going to keep getting hotter
apparently!!
See you soon!! (maybe)
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