A sense of spring

Salsa af Stavsnas
Ellinor Ristoff Staffan Ehde
Mon 28 Jul 2014 08:29
Last night after I posted the blog  we had a long hard works on deck etc.
23.30 I woke up Ellinor as we had new directions to go east more than north we needed to take down the spinacker outhaul and sheet in the genua for a half win run instead. As we worked in the pitch dark with red headlights the wind decided to play tricks on us, it started to veer in all directions and then just stopped blowing. We were surrounded by squalls, but there is no moon to help us see them so we need to look at the radar to spot them.
Eventually we got it all sorted out and slowly but surely Salsa stopped sailing towards the Antarctica and we headed 45 degrees NW.
But as we got closer to 4 am I was on watch, the wind died again and I fired up our Volvo and she had to run for an hour and a half till we got out some more strange squall situation. A squall can either deliver 100% more wind or "suck" energy so your wind disappears, usually it has to do on wich side you are...
New directions, where did they come from? Well read the next blog, about weather routing...
Today it was one degree warmer and as we are heding into the wind we have the cockpit in leward. That is great, together with a sun that came from a blue sky interupted by some white puffy clouds it was like experiencing an early spring day in Sweden.
Unfortunally we do not get any more north for a couple of days as we have to prepare for a windshift from NE.
The sea has been quite comfortable and life on board is coming to a normal every day life. We know these routines by now, you just have to stay on top of the safety part and not get lulled into some comfort zone.But that is my problem.
THE BIG TREAT TODAY WAS TO GET IN TOUCH WITH SOUTHERN CROSS NET! (A radio network formed by yachtees on single broadband.8191/0800NZ local time)
It felt so good, suddenly, through all the static noise I hear Graham on Maunie call for Salsa at about 8.20 this morning.
Amazing, we got contact from down here up to Fjij! So now we are in the roll call and are back in the sailing comunity. We feel long way from them, but a voice is a big comnfort! Especially Grahams! He is always cool, from him I learned the _expression_: Well it's a boat...