day 7
Nenne
Mon 6 Nov 2017 11:37
"Oh What A Night"
Before lunch it was quite bumpy. After lunch the wind and sea began to build up and, by early evening, it had become very messy with waves of up to 6 meters seeming to come from all directions along with a very cold wind blowing up to 25 knots or so.
Donald, Audrey and Rickard took the first watch (and got decidedly wet) while the rest of the crew occupied the shelter on the fly bridge and tried to get some sleep in preparation for a long night - and a long night it was.
Duncan and Jeremy took over the watch a 10 pm and Allan and Richard took the 2 am to 6 am shift. The point of the exercise is to keep the boat on course (the autopilot does a great job of doing that), to keep an eye out for anything unusual and to look out for passing ships. Ships normally show up on the chart plotter with their details/course etc, but the human eye, even tatty old ones, is much more reliable if a decision on evasive action is required.
Nenne is a 67 foot catamaran as I may have mentioned. That is fairly large! I have heard cats described as "floating party platforms" (mostly by the traditional monohull lovers). Well the sea, in the confused state it was, tossed this party platform around like a ping pong ball. And just for good measure, every now and then a wave would crash against the hull and spray the pilot station with freezing cold water. What fun.
Four hours seems like a short time. Believe me, by the end of the shift we were all exhausted.
Towards morning the wind settled a bit and the sea took on a more regular and predictable pattern. We have been making around 10 knots for most of the day and we are now effectively over the Bay of Biscay (hurrah) and will shortly turn southish and head down the Portugese coast.
Thanks to Donald we were all able to treat ourselves to a call home on his sat phone. It was great to talk to our loved ones. We miss you all.
Jeremy and all the crew on Nenne.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using SatTrans's Sattmail software.
Please be kind and keep your replies short.