Sea state rough!
Lady Stardust Faro-Portugal to Barcelona - 2010
Paul Collister
Sun 27 Aug 2006 16:27
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This was the apt description from the French
weather forecasters for the Atlantic area we were sailing in. It caused
conditions aboard to become quite rough, too. The huge walls of water I
described on the last trip were now 'massive moving mountains' of
water, which together with wind speeds of 25-30 knots made
it hard work to maintain one's balance let alone cook, eat, wash or type
entries to the blog. Paul and I suffered some
mild seasickness at the start so we didn't feel like eating much
anyway. We all kept hoping things would calm down but although the wind
speed dropped slightly the waves never really dropped below six feet, and were
often as high as fifteen feet! In these conditions injuries could
hardly be avoided and one particularly large wave forced the boat to
pitch so hard that it threw me against the galley shelf while I was
attempting to cook breakfast. My nose took the brunt of it, but luckily my
initial fears that I was going to be disfigured for life have proved to
be unfounded :). Paul got thrown from one side of the cabin to
the other and smacked the back of his head on the teak shelf, causing it to
crack and splinter (the shelf that is, not his head). Typically he was
more concerned about the wood than himself! Max thankfully managed to
avoid seasickness and injury and cooked us some delicious meals when conditions
allowed. It wasn't all bad though, despite poor Harriet breaking and the
engine needing to be fixed. We saw a shark at the start of the trip, a sea
turtle a few days ago and dolphins appeared a couple of times, though not as
often as before and were more aloof and distant than the ones we'd seen on
previous trips. We're now in Madeira getting clean, rested and having a
well-earned drink or two before setting off to explore Funchal.
Cheers for now,
Kathy
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