Pinball Wizards Blog: Day 10 Fri 3 Feb 2012
PINBALL WIZARD
Nigel North
Fri 3 Feb 2012 18:25
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Position: 19:00.11N 29:18.96W
We've received our first flying fish!
Delivered yesterday, Shrimpy was discovered by the Skipper up on the bow
whilst struggling with the heavy weather jib, then forgotten about until today
when Shrimpy was rediscovered on the other end of the boat having made his own
way there. At two inches long - well, one and a half anyway - he was
smaller than we were expecting and looked a bit thin too. But aviators
have to be slim dont they?
Its actually not at all easy to write this as PW is
rolling once every two seconds 20 degrees at least and every now and then a lot
more. To cook we have to tie ourselves to the cooker rail and use
rubber mats on the surrounds or everything ends up in the sink or on the deck.
Even then, using the special high friction mats, both teas I'd made this morning
took off into the sink. So now we make the tea in the sink and use long
straws. (joke). Actually, thats not a bad idea..
The reason its rolling around so much is two fold -
the sea state is confused with two quite big swells coming in from
different directions (NE and E), with swell heights of 3m-4m, and secondly we
are sailing under just one sail, the genoa |(big one at the front). With
no mainsail set (doesnt like sailing downwind) theres nothing to damp out any
oscillations, so we roll. This is why there are a lot of catamarans around
nowadays, which dont so much due to their much better lateral stability.
(We've just had a set go through which I've video'd, and the mouse shot off the
nav table as soon as I'd finished.)
The winds have been quite strong over the last few
days, and surprisingly variable too in strength. The only thing that
doesn't vary is the direction of NE. At present its around 20 knots, but
increasing to 28 or 30 at times, and we've had 34 knots once or twice, which if
we were sailing in any other direction than with the wind and swell, would be
most uncomfortable indeed - you really wouldn't want to be doing
that. As it is we're running with the wind pretty well and apart from the
rolling its no problem. My expectations of a steady 15 kts all the way were well off the mark though. But
we are both fine in our roly-poly world of
crashing pans, creaks and knocks, and neither of us have felt seasick recently,
or at all really, just a tad queezy at the start perhaps. One adjusts
quite quickly. Our routine of 3 hour watches at night, and shared watches
in the day is working fine and we wont change it now. So a daily kip to
catch up is the norm and actually most pleasant too. Alfie can be asleep
and snoring in two minutes flat which is most impressive. Takes me four or
five.. We take turns on the cooking of the evening meal, and tonight its
Alfie! Yippee! I get to do the washing up, in seawater. Works
fine..and its 24 degrees too.
Sightings: No ships. No
fish apart from Shrimpy. No cephalopods. Two Manx Shearwaters. One
airliner. One space station (next to the moon).
Numbers: Distance covered wed 1/02
129nm, thursday 2/02 128 nm. today 3/02 so far 94nm.
Distance from Canaries 1043nm. Total distance sailed since Portland:
2747nm up to yesterday.
Best wishes to you all, from Alfie and
Nig
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