Night Sailing

Shenanigan
Fri 23 May 2014 01:02
‘36.22.25N 45.00.74W’
A few nights ago Brian said he had experienced the best sailing of his whole life. The wind was manageable, the seas provided the entertainment and exhilaration. Christopher recorded speeds of 12 knots on his watch; which is double what we usually do. Last night was not so entertaining however! I was an hour into my watch settled with my Kindle, and had just stated reading ‘The Kite Runner’, the Hydrovane was steering a good course, when at 3am the wind and sea began to pick up pace. Then it started to rain. Time to reef. I woke Brian as I needed a bit of help – we needed three reefs in the main sail and had to furl a good amount of jib and we were still careering along. The rain became torrential and we became very, very wet. Just to make sure we were soaked to the skin a huge wave crashed high over the front of the boat and landed on us both. It’s a good job we both have the same sense of humour – we looked at each other and laughed! There was nothing else for it but to sit it out. So we did. We sat in the cockpit in the dark and pouring rain watching the lightning, drinking hot chocolate and eating shortbread. At 7am the wind dropped suddenly from 25 knots to less than 7 as we hit the eye of the heavy weather. Sure enough we were soon catapulted out the other side! The rain thankfully subsided a couple of hours later and we have spent the day, not very successfully, trying to dry out wet clothes! It’s very calm now and we have put the engine on which has made the boat nice and flat so I can type easily!