Day 99 – Shingles

Where Next?
Bob Williams
Tue 22 Mar 2022 10:12
Noon Position: 45 45.7 S 048 54.1 E
Course: E by N Speed: 6.5 knots
Wind: WNW, F4 Sea: moderate
Swell: WNW 2.5 m
Weather: overcast, light fog, cool
Day’s Run: 156

We remained under three reefs and 40% jib, running wing-on-wing before the strong W’ly breeze overnight. I was very glad that Sylph was well able to manage on her own for the night, needing very little attention from me because I spent the night in my bunk with an awful headache, trying to stay warm and generally feeling a bit sorry for myself.
This morning the wind had eased considerably and Sylph was starting to complain, rolling around, her boom banging about, so I dragged myself out of the bunk, donned the foulies and went on deck to set a bit more sail. With Sylph happier, I returned below for a nice hot cup of tea and breakfast (and drugs). It was then time to put a call in with the MSO.
After a fairly lengthy call, the diagnosis has been changed to a likely case of shingles. Bother! Still, it could be worse. As Ian said, it isn’t a life threatening condition and will resolve itself in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, the Doctor’s instructions are to relieve symptoms with analgesics, to find some fair weather and get as much rest as I can. … Aye Aye, Sir.
Conditions have now calmed sufficiently to allow the genset to be run without too much risk of it being swamped by a breaking wave. However, the battery charger that runs off the genset is only able to charge at a maximum rate of 8 amps so, given that the main batteries are basically exhausted, at that rate it would take almost two days of continuous charging to get them close to full again (another thing to add to the shopping list – a bigger charger). The obvious thing to do is to find lots of sunshine, so it seems Sylph and crew are in synch with one another.
While it would have been nice to have caught a glimpse of the Iles Crozet, given all the above, my priority is to get north again, and consequently on our current heading we are going to pass about 30 miles to the north of them.
I would like to finish as normal with an “All is well”, but the crew is only operating at about 60% capability and needs to conserve his strength. Sylph is also at less than 100% capability, with flat batteries and a dead engine (at least for the time being). So instead, I will say,
All is fair.