Nights in blue satin - By Henry

Noeluna en route pour Singapour
Matthieu Vermersch
Sun 10 Jan 2010 19:47

A little note about the crew’s busy nights on Noeluna.

 

Wednesday night was pretty quite. Trade winds blowing from the east around 15 knots, and nice use of the geenaker. Matthieu Chris and I organized two shifts of two hours each. I was lucky enough to have the 10-12 pm and 4-6 am shifts, which meant both moon and sun rise. Still lots of ARC boats in sight (2 to 3 could be spotted by their mast lights) and 1 or 2 more in the radar. Pretty eventless first night with each of us making the most of the beautiful sky and the feeling of getting away from civilization.

After the first hours in total darkness, around 11:30 a huge spot appeared at the east of the sky : Mrs Moon was kind enough to give us her light and pave our way westward. Good sleep for the whole crew. We knew we would need some rest for the seven nights ahead…

 

Thursday night began by an incredible sunset. There was absolutely no clouds in the sky, and we could see the sun turning into a humongous orange ball, sitting on the top of the ocean for a couple of seconds. With no more boats in sight and the sea all around us, it became pretty obvious for all of us at that moment that our planet is spinning around this huge ball of fire, that did eventually set down with Majesty below the horizon – So much for Galileo ! Soon after the first stars timidly appeared in a cloudless sky. Mars, god of War, was easily spotted within an hour, with a bright and steady orange color.  At that latitude we also have the privilege to see both Northern and Southern sky constellation, which is a great opportunity for Ferdinand and Marguerite to learn about all these funny mythological names hanging over our heads. I spent part of my shift bouncing my head between Orion, Cassiopeia and the southern Cross, and my companions for the night were called Betelgeuse, Canopus, Rigel, Sirius and the other millions of stars of the milky Way. The luminescent plankton appearing in the trail of the hulls gave this impression that mother nature was trying to craft a mirror, re-creating the constellations down in the ocean.  On my second shift we had to watch for a big cargo passing by on its way to some Caribbean island. 3 tiny lights in the dark is all you get for a 450 feet piece of steel in the middle of our liquid desert. Thanks to modern technology (radar and AIS) we could easily avoid this animal, and continue our way. Once again the moon shone for the second part of the night, making our lives easier through the growing waves. Only two ARC boats in sight at this point, and this ever growing feeling of becoming lonelier and more self reliant. We finished that night by a little storm around 6:00 AM, giving me the privilege to be awoken by an always courteous Matthieu to take the Geenaker out, and replace by the Genoese. Simple stuff altogether, as this boat is really well equipped for the crew to maneuver safely and comfortably, even during the darkest hours.

 

Friday, the night  welcomed us with a dolphin cruising alongside the boat, soon after dusk. Difficult to see in the dark water, but it was obvious that it was watching us and playing with the boat for a couple of minutes. Brave companion ! it is reassuring to see your friendly face and to think that you accept us in your kingdom.

We kept the parasailor out for the whole night, which gave us a comfortable 8-9 knots of speed in 16-18 knots of wind, and up to 11 knots surfing on the large swirls. What a feeling ! We could clearly feel the upwards traction of that tennis court sized sail, stabilizing the weight of Noeluna, and accelerating our course throughout the night.

Before my first shift I gave a basic astronomy course to Ferdinand, who I am sure will get an A+ in stars an constellation authentication before the end of the journey. We were soon all puzzled by a glowing haze that could clearly be seen to the south west. Chris conjectured it was a city, although as we were 150 nautical miles of the coast of any known land, it hardly could be anything else than Atlantide itself. We also thought it was the Moon, although it was still early for her to appear. After ½ hour of waiting for Mrs Moon to show up, we were really puzzled by what this could be. The moon would not take so long to appear. What was it then ? We had to wait another ½ hour to see something appear on the radar. Atlantide indeed ! A huge 600 feet moving oil rig all lightened up, making its way towards us at  15 knots of speed. Coming from Venezuela and making its way to Louisiana, it was still 20 nauticals away, and we could see the lights of that monster growing in intensity. Hundreds of thousands of watts of light glowing in every direction. It came 2 miles close to us during Matthieu’s shift, and I saw it going away for my 2 hours shift before handing the helm to Chris. A huge piece of hardware ! It took the whole night for that rig to go from one side of the horizon to the other, and only around 6 AM would the glow begin to fade away in the north west, minutes before the sun set. We put down the parasail at dawn, as weather forecast was saying that we should expect more wind throughout the day.

 

Saturday the 9th was our busiest night. It began before dusk with steady winds of 25 knots and 10-12 feet swirls. As the autopilot had a hard time compensating the counter effects of the winds and the wave, I took off the autopilot and skipped the catamaran on this liquid roller-coaster for about 90 minutes. I handed the helm to Ferdinand for a minute, and he did great at maintaining a tight course. I skipped until sunset, with beautiful colors right in front of us. We were all on the deck watching at the last rays while the parasailor maintained our speed at 9-10 knots. We took it out soon after sunset, which owed Matthieu a little flying lesson on the deck (thanks to Chris holding his legs he stayed on board), and we prepared ourselves for another busy night. As winds were forecasted to steady 20 knots, we elected the geenaker while keeping an eye on the tachometer. I took the first shift, and was up until 11 PM. A 600 feet gas tanker soon appeared on the radar, and, although still 24 nautical miles away,  was expecting to precisely cross our route 2 hours later. Monitored it most of my shift, and as I woke Chris up for his turn, we had 15 minutes to review course and avoid this new monster of the sea. When we called the tanker to tell them how we thought each of us should deflect its course, Chris perfect English became really handy while trying to understand the very strong Indian accent of the gas tanker skipper over the radio. As I went to bed around 11:45 PM, I thought it would be for a deep and sound sleep. This was without accounting for the wind that turned up to 30 knots, the boat riding swirls of at least 10 feet, and our speed going up to 13 knots at some point. As Matthieu pointed out, it seemed like a being in a washing machine, on the high speed program, the machine itself located in a truck skimming right and left on an icy lake… At 2 AM, as I was falling asleep, Matthieu called me for going back again on the bridge and bringing down the Geenaker, which Chris and I did promptly. We replaced it by the more “modest” Genoese, and were still going our 7-8 knots despite being under one sail only. We were all missing some sleep in the morning, and missed our fluffy beds back at home on a Sunday morning.

 

Nobody understood how, in this busy context, Matthieu had still the energy to prepare for all of us excellent pancakes this morning, which really, made us feel at home !

Hopefully these lines have provided you with an explanation of why we cannot publish more often on the blog, we are so busy with our nights ! (and I have said anything about ours days yet !)

 

Wishing that everything is fine back on earth. From Colombia seas, with Love,

 

Noeluna crew