Ensuenos/15 - Squalls, whales and a touch of the insane
Ensuenos
David Charity
Thu 9 Dec 2010 19:30
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14:47.14N 46:29.27W
Dear Diary,
The crew are all surviving and spirits are high,
albeit everyone looks a little weather beaten, sleep deprevated and unshaven,
the language has become 'agricultural', while spurts of insanity are not
uncommon. Ron singing a strange sailor's tune around 2am at the top of his voice
or Bas skipping around in his y-fronts are probably the most noteworthy,
although Dave's nest building and tourrets-esque, constant use of
"Yes, Sir Jasper" are becoming a concern.
They say you should be careful what you wish for,
and we wished for strong winds of the highestest order. And boy, are we getting
them. For the best part of 4 days we have had winds up to 34 kts (GaleForce 6)
and waves around 5m high. This is giving us what we need to make land
by 15th Dec, a few days later than expected. But with it comes a few
realisations, namely sleep is a luxury, hot drinks are hazardous and washing
clothes impossible. Moreover, a bi-product of the strong winds are
squalls. For those of you that haven't had the pleasure of experiencing one of
Mr Weather's adulascent children, think of it as a dark cloud that
come out of nowhere, dumps terrential rain, increases and changes
the wind direction, throws the contents and crew of boat in every
direction, then buggers off leaving you to clean up the mess and feeling
utterly spanked. Of course, the plus side is that it allows all the
crew to run onto the deck with a bar of soap for their weekly washing
session. I for one have learnt my lesson and will now only be wishing for
strong rum punches of the fruity variety and a nice, hot bath.
Fish news. We still have caught no
fish.
Wildlife Update! Ensuenos got frisky with its
first beluga whale today. The 30ft-ish horny bugger spent the best part of
1.5 hrs creeping up on the boat from behind, then serenading us with
displays of its white belly (thankfully that is all we could make out) as
it came alongside, before retreating away to start it mating
ritual all over again....so no different from a Saturday nigh out in the
UK. We could all feel its frustration as it finally breached its
final exhaustive breath of air before disappearing into the waves. You could
almost hear the word "frigid" in the breeze.
Take care and stay tuned for another update
shortly.
Roger, the cabin boy
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