Day 27
We enjoyed a lovely evening last night with
unusually fair weather after sunset. Recently evenings seem to bring a lot of
dense clouds but last night there was none of that and we were treated to one
of the most amazing night skies I have ever seen. It felt like every single
star; constellation, planet, galaxy and satelllite was clearly visible and not
just overhead but right down to the horizon like we were ensconced inside a
sparkly tent. A late rising moon meant there was no light pollution at all to
interfere with our stargazing and looking over the gunwhales of the boat into
the water we were treated to more sparkles from the foaming phosphoresce
rolling in our wake and the "roosters tail" of bioluminescence from
our stern.
In the early evening we'd played Yahtzee (I won!!)
read our emails and listened to music. Later as it got a little chilly we went
below and cooked dinner and watched P&R. We hadn't had any luck with our
fishing so we had sausages and homemade oven chips with slaw; a very special treat
Jamie had prepared to celebrate our "over half way-point".
Having chalked off another 15 degrees of longitude
(900nm) we moved our ship's clocks back a further one hour at
bedtime making our time difference to GMT -7hrs. This felt like another small
milestone in our trip.
Shortly after midnight... or one o'clock;
depending on which clock you looked at (ok so we hadn't quite changed ALL the
ship's clocks!!) the wind shifted to the east and we needed to point Hamble
Warrior more downwind. This required us rigging the spinnaker pole so that we
could "goosewing" the sails (sail with the main to one side and the
headsail poled out on the opposite side). This was all pretty straightforward
to achieve but it's the first night we have had to do anything much more
exciting than reef or unreef the sails for several days now. Whilst I was
standing in the cockpit listening for Jamie's instructions from the bow my mind
started wandering to a recent email my in-laws had sent talking about their attempts
to put the cover on their gazebo ready for summer. As Jamie yelled over the
wind which of the three lines I needed to pull/release/winch it occurred to me
that anyone wondering if taking up ocean sailing with their spouse was really
for them could probably assess their suitability with such an exercise.
Therefore if you wonder if this sort of thing is for you really all you need to
do is go into the garden in the middle of a windy night; spin around on the
spot a few times until your knees are a little wobbly to synthesize "sea
legs" then perform a simple but physical task (putting the cover on the
gazebo, rigging up a washing line or a simple hammock) whilst shouting
instructions to each other from a distance of around 10 to 12 metres. Your
level of success; enjoyment and state of your marriage once you have completed
this task will give you a pretty solid indication as to your suitability for
crewing a small boat across an ocean. If you do try this experiment PLEASE let
me know how it goes!!
Today has been a day of pretty consistent winds;
mostly force 4, making decent speeds averaging 5 to 5.5kts and with mostly clear skies and sunshine although there
has been a bit of cloud coming and going through the day. The sea state has
been reasonably comfortable although I think to a certain degree we are just
adjusting to a pretty consistent trade winds motion on-board. Our point
of sail does mean that a bigger wave every five minutes rolls the wind out of
the headsail and causes the whole rig to shudder and rattle for the next thirty
seconds as the sail re-fills.
There is still a pretty steady flow of flying fish
coming aboard so Meep is happy; if, possibly getting a little fat from the poor
fish to exercise ratio (he can run it off above decks when we get our anchor
down!) We are trolling a fishing line again today but I am going to make us a
pasta dish for dinner just incase we don't have any luck on that front.
We are going to upload our blog and emails a
little early today but our projected 5pm to 5pm daily run is 129nm which we are pretty pleased with (That does include an
extra hour though so not dissimilar to the last few days)
That's all for today.
