Wet Wednesday

Yacht Ariel
Henry Adams
Wed 30 Jul 2008 10:30
position: 47:20.3N, 12:30.1W
 
actually, i currently have sunshine, but feel entitled to moan as a) i'm english, and b) it's rained for 36 hours until last night and c) i have two days of rain and maybe gales forecast. woohoo!
 
so after this morning's email session, i'll switch the mainsails back over so i can use the triple reef in the one i repaired the other day (it's about the size of the sail on a laser pico, but Ariel is over 2 tons). then i'll swear lots whilst trying to stuff the sail through the cabin into the forepeak (it will inevitably have fallen in the water).
 
not really moaning - some strong winds will be good fun and will push me in quickly, maybe cutting the last four days to three. The area to watch out for, though, will be the continental shelf, where the ocean depths of 2000m quickly rise to a mere 150m deep. This, apparently, does absolutely horrific things to big waves, somehow tripping them up and making them crash all over the place. A quick glance at the chart shows that I should be just about over the shelf for tonight's near-gale. perfect.
 
slept very well - a little too well - last night after a heavy meal of meatballs and rice (i don't seem to be able to cut back my cooking for just one person), which is just as well as i won't get much sleep from here on what with the wind and then the shipping lanes. I've decided my keeping-awake tactic will be watching films on the laptop at night. It's still charging up well, and i can set the kitchen timer for every 30mins to scan the horizon. A ship passed last night, brightly lit up a mile or three away, but the first one not to set off the radar alarm. Did they have no radar running? why on earth not? slightly worrying, but not too much.
 
Onto Sherlock Holmes for my literary entertainment now - is it just me or is he really not that clever but just makes a whole lot of wild guesses based on little details that the author can subsequently reveal to the astonished Watson?
 
...and that's about my news!
 
eta saturday or sunday
 
H