Keeping cool!
ChilliOyster
Dave & Becky Werrett
Tue 2 Dec 2008 01:10
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Position 16:00.024N
31:46.757W
December 1st 2008
Today the children opened their advent calenders in
the middle of the Atlantic - something they will never do again I imagine. It
seems very odd to think that christmas is only just around the corner, and to
look at pictures of snow men. I wonder if they realise how lucky they are to
have had this experience. I would say we have all now settled in to the rhythm,
something everybody said we would do - but not something you think is possible
in the first few days when you are still getting your sea legs, nights seem to
last forever and your mind simply cannot comprehend that you will not see land
for another 3 weeks.
We are all really enjoying it now, the bigegst
problem is the heat (and current lack of wind). We really have crossed over into
the tropical waters, I would say the temperature rarely drops below 27/28 deg
and in the sun it must be well over 30 every day, as I type the sea temp on my
dial reads 27deg! We expected some rain or squalls but to date have
not had anything except a 2 minute drizzle on about the third night. The heat
down below is quite stifling during the day even with all the windows open to
allow a through draft. Perhaps that is why I currently prefer the nights to the
days, the nights are balmy, watches have become more relaxed because we simply
haven't seen anything other than one light for about 5 days now so the
possibility of a mid sea collision is now significantly reduced! Most of the
watch will be spent watching the weather, looking for squalls which can suddenly
sweep through and bring gusts of up to 40knt winds and making sure the sails are
trimmed to get maximum speed . Tonight we are mmotoring again though so not too
much to worry about - except to watch and see when the winds pick up so we
can turn the engine off and hoist the canvass. As
I said yesterday we have just changed the watch system so now there are 3
watches per night - 8-12, 12-4 and 4-8. I am currently on 12-4 with Dave. We sit
in the cockpit with our pillows and talk, drink tea and allow one another 20/30
mins to drift off whilst the other one remains awake. Dave W & Sam did 8-12
and I think Jordan & Dave W are doing 4-8, tomorrow night it will reverse
and Dave & I will do 2 watches.
We all fantasize about cold drinks - the water
coming out of the water maker is warrm because the sea is so warm and we really
have no way of making it cold. Yesterday I allowed the kids to top up the
freezer with the water bottles - BIG MISTAKE, this morning my freezer had
defrosted. I had frozen it solid in Las Palmas before we left but at sea it will
only run on the generator, so I have been keeping it topped up by running the
generator for an hour or two a day and this has been fine, But I guess it simply
couldn't cope with 10-15 litres of warm water. So this morning I had to take out
and cook everything on the top that had deforsted, which made for an
interesting tea! Then I sealed the freezer up for a couple of days. But
as I ran the generator for several hours this morning to try and refreeze
the freezer it suddenly cut out - quite worrying when the generator is also the
only way I can get the watermaker running! We lifted the salon floor for a
couple of hours while everything cooled down then Dave had a look, we think it
simply overheated, abit like the rest of us, because a hour or two later we got
it runnng again, so hopefully my leg of lamb and steaks for the midway party
will survive for a few more days!
After lunch today, the kids were desperate to go
swimming, but even though we didn't have much wind we had the
spinnaker up and we were still doing 6 knts and the boat was moving too
fast so they had to make do with a bucket dousing; initiated by Dave W, who
suddenly got up, removed his shorts, (don't worry he had his ships knics
underneath!) dropped the bucket in the sea and tipped it over his
head! The kids thought this was great and the washing up was abandoned.
Shampoo and shower gel was fetched and everyone had an impromptu shower and cool
down, even the dog jumped up and joined in. It was a good opportunity to swill
the decks down as well. Afterwards everyone lay out on the foredeck and baked
dry! I took some great photo's - I have attached one the rest I will upload when
I get to land..! Lots of people have asked for more photo's but using the sat
phone it costs about £5 per photo to upload even if I resize them to less than
50kb - so I have just selected a few to make the blog a little more
interesting!
So given the poor wind situation we are all now
resigned to a 19/20 day crossing - our average speed is 6.1knts and we have
ended up doing 2900 miles rather than 2500 because of how far south we have had
to go. But the calm weather means gentle sailing so we can't complain really, if
we had all the time in the world it would actually be
very pleasant, but we have got an eye on the flights we have
booked to come home. We fly the spinnaker all day and motor at night - at least
we have done for the last few days and we can probably keep this
up for at least another 4/5 days with our fuel reserves - by this time we should
be the other side of the low where there are some reasonable winds which should
blow us into St Lucia - well at least that's the plan. I'd rather have this
problem than be worrying about storms - besides the generator, my biggest upset
today was my one and only cold vodka and tonic got knocked over! I put one can
of tonic in the fridge a day - as I do 2 beers for the boys, and I was so
looking forward to it - as I wasn't on first shift I poured it out at drinks
oclock (6), had one sip - turned to shut the fridge up and a big wave hit the
boat and my glass tipped in the sink...! So if that is as bad as my day gets
then we're doing OK!. |
