Day 13: Thunderbolts and Lightening..very very frightening
Purple Mist
Skipper: Kate Cope
Fri 20 Jan 2023 14:29
19:50.893N 43:27.385W
Day 13: Thunderbolts and Lightening..very very frightening
Where you left us yesterday afternoon we were having a perfect day. The wind had picked up and we were going 7kts plus with the code zero. Expedition routing seemed to be working and we were getting more wind …until we weren’t getting more wind and we sank into a wind hole. Oh well at least it was warm, relaxing, just bobbing along . We were trimming hard but to be honest it made little difference.
We were reflecting over our gourmet French dinner (Le Bon bag again) how nice it is to have no deadline. The speed is what it is and you have to live with it. Maybe this is why sailing is such a blessed contrast to modern life
So we were looking forward to a quiet and comfortable night of slowly bobbing along when - flash- umm was that lightening on the horizon? Flash flash …yes it was . Now the thing about lightning storms and boats is that if it hits you it can take out all your electronics and electrics. Worse case the discharge can punch a hole in the boat which if you can’t plug up ….well you get the picture. This is scary stuff and we were both pretty nervous. Anyway we busied ourselves planning putting some key handheld devices in a biscuit tin to protect them, then sat watching the flashes. We couldn’t really outrun it and it wasn’t obvious which way to go to get out the way …and anyway we were going nowhere very fast.
After a nervy 2hrs we concluded the flashes were not really getting closer and if anything had subsided a bit. We relaxed slightly and proceeded to enjoy the M&S biscuits (Thanks Mum) that had been ejected from the tin to give us energy for the rest of our watches that night. We needed this energy as the wind was changing direction all the time so it was a full time job to adjust the heading and trim the sails.
We had the zero up all night as the wind was less than 5kts and swinging 180” at times . It’s such a flexible sail and whilst not as fast as the spinnaker down wind the fact it seems to stay flying in light airs and can be trimmed to higher angles makes up for it .
Today we have had the big spinnaker up since dawn. As the wind has clocked round we needed to gybe. Now we’ve not gybed with the spinnaker net up and it’s somewhat in the way. Anyway we explored using the second pole which was marginally successful though I would to want to do it in strong winds without more refinement. Here is Claire pole dancing on the foredeck.
