OK, enough with the gales

Saxon Blue's Blog
Harvey Jones and Andrea Stokes
Wed 29 Dec 2010 04:23
Tuesday night, St George

OK, OK, that's enough gales for now. I managed to get a good night's sleep by putting in ear-plugs and staying up late watching the film "Mongol" with Bill. By morning, we were getting tossed around all over the place. The wind had gone around to the North a bit and was screaming through the town at anything up to 50 knots. Each gust healed us over to port and then brought us up short on our lines, lurching and thumping around.

I stayed in bed until half nine, then had breakfast and started reading my new book about the history of money. That was all OK but I've been in St George too long now and I can't wait to get underway again. There were squally screaming through all the time so it wasn't very good weather for going for a walk and I was apprehensive about leaving Saxon Blue in all the wind. That said, the wind really got me down today. It's hard to relax when you're just waiting for a bang or crunch. Luckily, that never happened but it was hard work.

The wind died down a bit in the afternoon so I went for a walk up the hill to see the area inside the reef. There is a large container ship anchored over there. The wind was blowing the tops off the waves around it but, given the lack of fetch, the sea was only about 1 meter so I suppose the ship is there sheltering. I'm not sure if it's on its way into Hamilton or back out to sea. Either way, I'm sure they're not going anywhere until everything calms off a bit. Standing on top of the hill, it was hard to breathe in the gusts.

Back onboard Saxon Blue, we had a lovely Thai curry and then watched a film about Jessie James which was monotonous but passed the time. Big Bill and I sorted out a radio schedule for us to keep in touch on the way South and we're just about to watch some of our Bill's comedy on his computer. The wind has finally started to die down now so hopefully, that's the start of the calmer weather. I hope so. We're planning to leave on Thursday now and I really don't want to delay it any longer.

Harvey

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