AZAB Day 8 Sun 9th June - Easy morning, grey/wet pm
Nutmeg of Shoreham
Ollie Holden
Sun 9 Jun 2019 17:26
Emilia and I spend hours last night just chatting, it was lovely. We have an elongated happy hour, which starts with niblles and drinks, then we cook (last night it was chilli con carne with lashings of grated cheese), then we went onto a packet of sweets. It didnt end until it was well dark, just one of those magical evenings, even though it was blowing hard and very wavy.
Just before midnight the wind eased off and became a really nice 14 or so knot breeze on the beam. The waves quickly eased as well so we made the most of it and slept like logs - I probably got the most sleep I've had so far and other than getting up to shake reefs out and look around, I slept until 0930. I have just been using the AIS alarm but I think I'm going to use the radar set to transmit every 3 mins as well, as not everyone's got AIS and there has actually been a reasobnable amount of traffic... We've passed (well, seen on AIS/in the distance) at leasst 3 boats heading home from the Azores. I had a nice chat via VHF with a lady on a boat called Cerulean of Penryn - turns out they are just returning from a year's Atlantic circuit, and they keep the boat in Gosport. She invited us to their welcome home party in July! Small world and great to meet other people doing interesting things with their lives.
Today has been pretty relaxed; the morning was lovely and calm, when the seas dissipate, Nutmeg just effortlessly flows over the swell. But obvs that wasnt going to last! So this afternoon we've got grey drizzle, we're back on the wind, we've been headed so we can't sail direct where we want to go. Ho hum. But it is only about 16kts of wind, and I expect it to free off around midnight so we should have an easy enough night ahead - I hope. It is horrendously damp though - everything feels clammy. I did actually take my fleece off for the first time yesterday - but it's back on, and we've both been in thermals the whole trip. All my sailing kit is white with salt - we are going to have to do some serious washing when we get there! I reckon we will have been hard on the wind for over 50% of this trip - and so far we've only had wind abaft the beam for <24hrs.
Consequently this afternoon we've read the Azores Pilot guide together, and then both settled into reading books. Emilia has polished off two today, and I think it is probably time to crack open the nibbles.
We've been watching for wildlife - there have been quite a lot of birds, mainly gannets (I think). At one point, a small black bird circled us, tryign to find somewhere to land but it was never going to happen. Poor thing, if he's tired out here then he's got a long way to go to find somewhere to rest his wings.
Earlier Emilia and I both noticed we were sailing through a huge turbulence, it was like a massive upwelling of water. We never saw what had caused it but I can only assume we spooked a very large whale who dived just before we ran into him.
There have been lots of Portuguese Man O'War jellyfish - they look like plastic bags on the water but this is their sail - translucent with purple and orange edges, just blowing them along on the ocean. Now and again we've been joined by dolphins but none have hung around too long.
As I write, we are about 300 miles away, and if we are lucky we might hold onto the wind - it looks like the Azores High is moving East and we may actually end up with Easterly breezes to take us in, which would be nice. Not making judgements on when we will arrive as thats always fatal!