Wednesday it’s all about avoiding the storm
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Wed 5 Jun 2019 09:41
It’s Wednesday and the sailing has been more strong winds and bouncy boat. Bobby is still cooking though I’m getting more able to spend time below which is handy given the weather. I can now mind the boat on my watches from inside and not get so wet
Last night was 20kts pretty much constant with squalls of 30kts. During the day you can see them coming and where possible try and route round the worst. If the track looks a bit wiggly this is why.
At night they are more difficult to spot. We still have no moon so you just see blackness on the horizon and the stars disappear then wham it’s 30kts, the boat is flying and you are left trying to hang on with one hand and release the main sheet with the other.
The squall in the photo was a bit of a turning point as I decided to just embrace it after all the boat is fine with 30kts we’ve 2 reefs on the main and a J4 on. So I decided to sing my favourite boat song Queen don’t stop me now ...i mean I am having a good time really with the waves slushing down the deck creating a paddling pool to sit in, then other waves just crash up the side and dump 10buckets of water on your head ...ohh and the squalls have a load of heavy rain ...at least it washes the salt off. After the squall passed I looked behind and there was a massive rainbow. It felt like the weather was saying I liked that song. Well done so I sang it somewhere over the rainbow. At this point Boby thought I had gone bananas.
So we survived the squalls and today feels a rather calm 10- 18kts however trouble is brewing south of us a nasty low pressure is sweeping through so we are going slowly west to avoid it...just in case you are wondering why we are not going the right way.
Thanks for the messages of support. Nigel wishes he was here and suggests I fly the a5 poled out. I’m assuming this is not outside assistance as at the moment there is no way we are flying anything but the J4...maybe later :-). Ginger is still working
Jerry reminds me it’s a privilege to be here and he is right. It took a lot of hard work to get the boat ready and I was fortunate to get the time off work and a coskipper with the time off as well. I am enjoying it even the wet and bouncy bits. EFOY fuel cell working really well but not tried the spinnaker net yet. Might yet get to try the Jordan series drogue if we get slammed by one of the low pressures.
Thanks to Deb , good to know the broken boats are all safe.
Tessa thanks for resending me Facebook comments . I can’t read Facebook only email
