Sunday 9th May (Lini’s Journal)

Brindabella's Web Diary
Simon Williams
Sun 16 May 2010 02:29
The sun rose at 5.30am, lighting the whole sky with pink tinges and
soon after breakfast, weather downloads and a chat to’ Festina’, I hit
the sea berth and didn’t emerge until two hours later: Boy I needed
that.
Our first day at sea was hot with light winds which we gave up on
at 2pm and started the engine. We had long periods of motor sailing to
keep us sane from otherwise thrashing sails and were grateful of the
bimini and its shade as we bobbed about in the ocean.
For dinner we ate chicken and vegetables with noodles on the cockpit
table it was so calm. The sunset was great, but largely due to ugly
cloud building with a few flickers of lightning.
Our watch system tonight was good for me: Si let me sleep an extra
hour until 11pm so I stole his alarm and let him sleep until 3am. This
did him no favours however as I managed two off watches and Si only
one. I felt great and Si looked dreadful as his last watch was rather
eventful too. Back to three hours tonight I think. There had been
thunder and lightning off to starboard through my watch, but Si had
dodged a series of squall lines moving north-east to south-west for
hours. He said it was a miracle we had no rain. Indeed the first
skies I saw of the new day were still full of squall clouds, one with
two rainbows leading to treasure on the seabed.