Tues 15
Snap
Tue 15 Dec 2015 09:37
I have motored and motorsailed south overnight .. and according to Bx I should try get still further south today, perhaps picking up wind later tonight or sometime tomorrow. At the moment I am in only 6-9knots from the E.... Bx sez the “proper” wind might be from the south… but it's all changing and very flaky
Meanwhile, “Stingo” John has been in touch, with more weather advice and modelling himself as TotBxWx. Is that allowed? He advises flipping a coin, and then heading either NW or SW, or staying put, and all will be fine, eventually.
He also asks if I remember the transat we did together, where much to my horror (he says) he suggested not to have any forecasts at all. Yes I do remember, very vividly. That was where John and I went on Mo’, with other crew Pat and a professional chef too. I remember hanging on to the mast with full sail up in 40knots of wind trying to put in a belated reef, and 5-6metre following seas with a following shark which stayed generally above the deck level of the boat, as we surfed in to the carib at up to 21knots on the tail end of (unknown to us) hurricane Omar, I think it was. Unforgettable, definitely. Much to John’s horror I also threw myself overboard as MOB drill off Fuerteventura, and when the squalls came in I razzed the motors to lessen the apparent wind, also much to John’s horror. In fact the entire trip was to my horror, or to John’s horror, or to our joint horror. Even after putting the anchor down in St Lucia I discovered that - to my horror- someone else snagged it and then hauled themselves into our boat.
John is also wondering about the mailing list for the blog. He thinks it is automatic or summing, but i just type in a few email names at whim, and the rest of the people will have to find the blog. Not a big deal really. So no error - I just didn’t type your name in that other time. sorry John.
Meanwhile Mandie is VERY impressed at how patient I have been. I think this is quite funny. Cos i mean, I am not at all patient type if “patience” is that attribute one needs in order to tolerate the way in which the generally useless and dim-witted people of the world make things slow, expensive, imposssible or all of these.
But that’s not what’s happening here, is it? I’m sailing using the wind and er, there isn’t any. Not anyone else’s fault, only mine for setting off when I did i suppose. So I mean I can be as impatient as I like, but it’s a bit irrelevant. And anyway … how would I express any impatience? “Oh, I’m not standing for this treatment from the weather gods! I’m going to … “ er, what?? Exactly WHAT would I have done to demonstrate that I had completely “lost it” I wonder?
Katie takes it further and asks - what do I think about all day? Hm? Um, well, there’s the books and so on? I got “game of thrones” book free at a marina, so no big deal that it’s rubbish - we both thought the TV adaptation scenic but er, rubbish. But am I alright, she asks? Yep, all fine. What about if she writes emails to me about people I’ve never met? Yes, still fine. Ok, how about if she writes long emails about people I haven’t met, and which take several attempts to receive down the sat phone before I eventually discover that they’re about some friend of her daughters’ mates brother in law that she doesn’t like anyway and has no intention of ever meeting, hm? Yeah, it’s fine send me any ole rubbish anyone :-)
I decided not to take cigarettes on this trip and it’s been fine as I thought it would be. I ran out about a week ago. I have also been suiitably lazy on the food thingy, taking fruit and protein shakes and so on, and that’s working nicely as well.
I put the eggs in the fridge yesterday after wiping them with cooking oil to make them last longer. Will this work, anyone? I bet it will, but if someone knows special info such as “it’s ok wiping eggs with cooking oil instead of vaseline to make them last longer, AS LONG AS YOU DON”t THEN PUT THEM IN THE FRIDGE” well, I suppose i need to know that.
Bookwise I have still got a few books, and then I think i have gotten some computer files from Sarah called “all the books in the world” some of which i’ll be able to look at without having a special bit of software. Another ruse is read the physical books in a light, casual and speed-ready sort of way, which means that there’ll be plenty of detail to discover second time around, even if that’s only a week away.
So anyways, motorsailing again, full sail heading 220 at 6knots at 1000rpm.