19:44N 39:25W 1st December 2009 Dances with Whales and Wales
The Snark on The ARC
Ben Little
Tue 1 Dec 2009 03:22
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Hi folks,
It has been a day of ups and downs both
metaphorically and literally. I think today and tonight has been the
roughest seas we have experience so far on the ARC, it has been hard work
steering and hard work doing anything on board comfortably, sleep
included. Dugald and Chris are saying they are used to the movement of the
ship and it helps sleep, for me loud noises and lots of movement usually means I
have to get up to change to sail set or otherwise check the boat.
Sometimes needlessly but it is very easy to get in a mess in the dark when you
don't know the boat. The Guys are doing great and it is not them
waking me up it is my subconscious mind in worry mode.
Today was a special day for us in more ways that
one. As you know it was our half way mark and we did celebrate with a
special half way meal accompanied by a bottle of wine (more on that
later). It is a strange and somewhat comforting feeling that we are more
than half way across the ocean, we have a route to follow and we know how
far it is to get there if not how long. Anyway getting to the
highlight of the day, instead of Dolphins we had Whales playing with our boat
and surfing in the waves beside us. They were Minky Whales,
we were able to ID them from a sheet of paper provided by the world cruising
club (very thoughtful) we god a good look at the head and mouth and dorsal fin
and the size was about right. We started the engine as I have been
told to do, this is to make sure that large whales, territorial Bulls,
understand that you are not a whale and therefore no threat to their territory
and females. It quickly became clear that these were too small to be
a real danger to the boat (about 7-8 metres long) and that they were just
here to play. The whales were surfing in the large swell you could see
them in the wave crests and then they would swim along the boat and under the
prow. The the guys think it was a pair of whales but they moved
around a lot for that to be the case so maybe a few more. Anyone
who has time Google up their behaviour. It was much harder to get a
picture of the whales but we managed some video in which you can just about see
them and a photo of one of them surfacing for air, the latter I will send in as
a separate message to the blog once I have shrunk the image size. less
than impressive photography but evidence nevertheless. So our encounters
with nature continue, and we have yet to recourse to watching Dugald's blue
planet videos. What will tomorrow bring? Dugald declined the option
of a mid Atlantic swim with our aquatic friends, regrettably it would have been
far too dangerous due to the large surf and high winds.
On the subject of weather, despite the mention of
rough seas, the wind and weather is in our favour and is blowing us quickly in
the right direction. We could go quicker but tonight we are tired and have
reduced sail as warned by our Norwegian neighbours of possible squall activity
up toe 35 knots in the night. So far there is no evidence of this but we
do have up to 28 knots blowing tonight so I have double reefed the main and
we have no genoa out. With a extra crew or 2 we could really go for
it and bomb along at 9 or 10 Knots consistently but we are settling for our
7.5 or 8 and a quieter night even if limited sleep for me. There is a
consistent wind forecast for the next few
days which will chase us to St Lucia without going further south, after that
folks think we may get calmer weather. I was chatting with a nearby
skipper on the radio, who was still enthusiastic about heading further
south for more wind on the recommendation of his weather router (a chap called
Chris Tibbs who I have met) I said to him well I have 25 knots right
now if they have more wind down there they can keep it. I think that this
route we are on will give is a good wind angle for the prevailing easterlies and
therefore give us better boat speed even if the wind drops. So half way in
distance and also half way in time more of less I think. So Julie (for
those of you unfamiliar Julie has established herself as the good Witch of
the East Midlands, able to command the winds through prayer) I'm pretty
sure you are reading this, we would like 15-20 knots from the East or East
South East (not fussy South East at a pinch) for the next 7 days along a
line from where we are on the map to St Lucia. After that we will
hopefully have arrived. If your powers can smooth out the seas some that
would be even better, at least maybe we can have waves from only one direction
at a time
I said Dances with Whales and Wales, well that is
because today was a welsh themed day on the Ipod. We started with tom
Jones and then we got manic street preachers etc etc. Dugald is the DJ and
doing a great job, but we had to threaten a salty bath for his Iphone when he
started on Scottish country dance music for his Scottish themed day (actually
themed morning we ran out). We have also had US day for Thanksgiving and
then a Canada day and an Irish day, you get the picture. Maybe it is brit
pop tomorrow?
On our midway meal, we put it off at lunch
time as the sea was really rough and no one felt like anything
complicated, and I did not feel like cooking it in a pitching
Galley. I am not sure if it got any better but we decided in the
evening to go ahead, I'm pretty sure I went through the menu on a
previous edition, so quickly fois followed by duck. The Fois was OK
though we were limited by accompaniments, however I would not choose
to cook confit de canard again at sea due to hive amounts of duck fat
that co with it, We managed to dispose of the first pan full of fat before
the second went flying. Luckily I was wearing my apron and that
took the brunt of it and I was able to quickly get to the deck shower and
wash off the rest. After the mess and clean up it did taste great with
crushed new potatoes with garlic butter, and still fresh broccoli. We were so
full that we did not get to dessert, perhaps for breakfast. So the meal
was great but the getting there was a bit of a stress and strain.
We are trying to find out what is wrong with the
generator, the engineer and panda HQ in Germany suggests maybe a battery
problem, sods law the battery (new) in my multimeter is dead so we cant easily
tell. To solve this we are thinking of an RV with the Norwegians who are
close by in the morning to get a spare battery for the multimeter.
Alternatively we may be able to blue peter a power source using AA batteries and
Duck tape (sorry I don't carry sticky back plastic on board), which will save us
time meeting up. Lets see how we feel in the
morning.
To end on a more up beat note I am of to get the camera and see if I can
get a good whale photo for you.
Bye for now, hope to hear from you
soon.
Ben
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