Island Kea II - 15th day at sea

Island Kea II
Steve and Katrin Everett
Sun 9 Dec 2007 12:24
Position as at 12.00 midday UTC 9th of December
15:18.26N
48:55.68W
Today is a
wonderful day. It rained very heavily last night but on my watch which was
6-9am local time it started clearing and the sun is now shining. Looking
at the detailed weather forecast, we are now just outside the band of rain and
thunderstorms and we just hope we keep ahead of it.
It is
still fairly strong winds and big seas - but who cares when the sun is
shining!!
We have
had more than 3 days and nights heavy storms and rain with big seas and it
was starting to get us down and everything getting pretty wet. Island Kea
has proved to be a brilliant heavy weather boat and has handled this very
well. The autopilot has been a star and we have used it a lot as it seems
to be able to steer the boat better than us. We have obviously had a heavy power
drain and had to run the engine and generator quite a lot to keep up with
it. The main ship charger now seems to be working with the generator,
fingers crossed, it was hopeully just a blip...
We are now
hoping to get to St Lucia some time on Friday and we can't wait but it would be
great to get a few sunny days before then to be able to properly enjoy the
sail.
During all
the weather conditions, we have still be cooking fresh dinners every day, even
though it has been a bit interesting at times and probably a bit
dangerous.
We now
just have half main out, nothing else and we are still doing 7
knots.
The
following seas are like bungalows and hopefully they will start to settle down
once we have a bit of sun...
Katrin |